How a Man and His Friends Helped Save Equestria

Chapters

Prologue; Chapter 1
Unexpected Company
Find a Pet. I Mean Friend.
What's With All the Humans?
Train Rides are Boring
No More Stalling (A.K.A. The Third Pony)
The Past (... and Present... and Future...) of Spry Canyon pt. 1
The past (... and Present... and Future...) of Spry Canyon pt. 2
So You Say Time Travel is Impossible, Eh?

Prologue; Chapter 1

How a Man and His Friends Helped Save Equestria

Prologue

It was raining outside. Ah, how comforting it was to know that you have a house to protect you from the weather. Spry sank comfortably into his bed and went to sleep.

***

Carson and Mitch paused at the enormous circular metal hatch after a few insurmountable challenges that they impossibly surmounted and nodded slowly and solemnly to each other.

They had been sharing this same dream for a little under a month. The first time the two already-friends had met each other in this dream, they had had some strange experiences. Over the next week and a half, they had learned the game of this dream, fighting and struggling through a direct path to some strange door.

Each day, they woke up in Dream-Land closer to this door, which they had not even discovered until the end of that first week. When they finally got to the door, seemingly out of nowhere. A voice coursed through both their minds, saying that in the opening of the door, they could either destroy two worlds, including their own; or save both from destruction. But, in not opening the door, a great possibility existed that their world would remain unharmed, but the other world would surely be as good as dead.

After a few weeks, they had come upon the decision to open the door, no matter what the risk. They were afraid of what might lay beyond that door, but would not sit idly by while another world was being destroyed. Besides, the possibility still existed that their world would be destroyed anyway.

It was then that they realized that they had no idea how to open the door. Of course, it was not as if they hadn’t done anything like this before. Focusing their minds, Carson and Mitch located the lock on the door - a complex machine of a lock right in the middle. Mitch felt his fist in surprise (for it was protected and studded by a thin layer of adamantium) then opened it, revealing a strange mechanism that had emerged from the near-invincible glove.

It started glowing profusely, then floating, and suddenly, it shot right into the door. A loud crack sounded, and suddenly, there was a discernible crevice running the length of the door.

“Well, that was easier than I expected,” Carson remarked.

He then noticed a wheel, the kind used to open hatches, slide out to the right of the door, after an opening appearing in the metal to let it through.

“I guess it’s pretty obvious what we’re supposed to do, huh?” noted Mitch.

Carson nodded and turned the wheel just a bit. Just as he was doing this, blinding white light shot out from the crack made, slightly startling the two. After a slight pause, Carson turned with more vigor, eager to see this light (and what was producing it) in its full glory.

As the door opened fully, they noticed that it was not simply white, but also green, cyan, and magenta mixed in splotches.

“Let’s hope we don’t die,” said Carson with a touch of apprehension to his voice.

“Yeah, that would kind of suck,” agreed Mitch as they both jumped in.

Chapter 1

Carson and Mitch dropped onto a path, about 9 feet in width, seemingly made of light itself. The walkway was encompassed by a deep green wormhole-looking tube, appearing to have no solidity, and to be made entirely of energy. Large green bolts of electricity appeared and disappeared sporadically, following the path of the wormhole and walkway, though staying on the edges of the wormhole. The path in and of itself seemed to have no end, though it did look to disappear into a horizon line in the distance.

“Do you think this might be the ‘other world’ that voice was talking about,” asked Mitch.

“I don’t know, but let’s keep going and see if we can find out,” answered Carson.

They walked down the path for a while, noticing that everything became increasingly brighter, and strangely enough, that horizon line seemed to get closer.

Curiously, the two walked more swiftly along the path until they could no longer see because of the brightness. By then they were thoroughly confused, but Carson told Mitch,

“Keep going forward, or we’ll lose all sense of direction.”

As soon as Carson said this, they both walked off the path, which had ended abruptly, and fell through a white nothingness for a while - enough to wonder when you would stop. Suddenly, the speed of their descent was greatly increased. They both felt all of their nerves going haywire. Everything tingled, itched, and felt extremely painful all at the same time; as if their very anatomies were changing.

“What’s happening?” Mitch yelled.

“I have no idea!” Replied Carson as they hurtled through blinding light.

The extra speed ended as soon as it had begun, though the pain still persisted; and even increased in intensity. Carson and Mitch were brought to a grinding halt, inducing a huge amount of whiplash on the two. At this point, Mitch blacked out from the pain, and Carson soon afterwards.

***

The two woke up disheveled and moaning. “Uuuggh... My head hurts,” moaned Mitch. He then went to grab his head to staunch the pain radiating from there, only to find that he had no fingers to grab it with. In fact, his “hand” seemed as hard as a rock. “What the...” began Mitch, before an exclamation from Carson made him turn.

“Who are you?” asked Carson, pointing his hand at the strange figure in front of him, only to find out that instead of a hand, he had a red hoof, connected to a red arm. In fact his entire body was red; save his mane and tail, which were long and brown with just a bit of spikiness. “Who am I?,” he exclaimed in astonishment.

“Is that you, Carson?” asked Mitch, who was discovering that he was orange all over, and very equine in shape.

“Yeah, at least I think so... Mitch?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Mitch replied. “So what happened, and why does everything look like a cartoon?”

You could practically see the cogs working in Carson’s brain. He was coming up with something. His voice was slightly grave when he said, “Mitch, this is going to sound crazy, but it’s the only solution I can think of,” he began.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Asked Mitch.

“That we’re in Equestria, and we’re ponies?”

“Eeyup.”

“ Well, it makes sense. This must be the other world that voice was talking about.”

“Exactly!” Said Mitch. “It’s like a dream come true!”

Carson asked, “So you’ve been dreaming of becoming a pony too?”

“Well, duh,” adding a slightly energetic shrug, “What brony wouldn’t?”

“By the way,” Mitch added, “What’s my cutie mark?”

“Well, it looks like like a bass clef! Ha, that’s ironic, considering that you’re a tenor!”

“You’ve got to remember that I play cello, Carson.”

“Oh, yeah. What’s my cutie mark, then?”

“It looks like the outline of some sort of bird. It’s wings are outstretched.”

“An eagle. Awesome! Well anyways, now we’re here and we’re here to save both our world and theirs,” Carson said, changing the mood to grim and adding, “Where are we, anyway?”

“Well, we should probably look for the nearest civilization to find that out. There seems to be something off in the distance that looks like buildings,” replied Mitch, pointing out towards something that indeed did look like buildings, with his orange hoof.

“Well then, let’s get going!” Was Carson’s response.

Before they could get going anywhere though, Mitch suddenly interjected, “Whoa. You’re a pegasus.”

Carson looked at back. “So I am... YES!” He said, shooting up into the air about a two feet. He immediately fell back though, disappointed. He then noticed something else: That Mitch was a pegasus as well. “Mitch, you’re a pegasus too!”

“Huh? Whoa, I am!” Mitch shot up into the air like Carson, but managed to spin around a few times before plummeting back to Equestrian soil.

“Well, I think I know what we really need to do first,” said Carson, unsuccessfully trying to stand and take a few steps, “We need to learn how to walk and fly.”

“Eeyup.”

***

Learning to walk was easy enough - they got that mastered in a few minutes. Learning to fly was a completely different story. Since they had been walking practically their entire lives, Carson and Mitch quickly adapted to four legs instead of two, but they had obviously never had wings before. Trying to learn to fly was literally trying to learn how to use a completely new and foreign part of the body.

That was when something incredible happened: A glint of red in the distance, and Philomena the phoenix was there in her fiery glory. Little can be said about this amazing bird without making an understatement. Even its very presence increased the mood and induced awe, with her flame feathers glowing. Settling down between the Carson and Mitch, the bird produced two deep crimson feathers with fiery orange shafts. One feather was very large while the other was still large in its own right, but was dwarfed by the size of the other. The latter was on a necklace, while the former was not connected to anything, but had the means to do so.

(note the bottom with a loop to tie the feather onto something)

Mitch took the necklace, while Philomena produced a piece of golden string from beneath her feathers and tied the larger to Carson’s ear.

With the feathers on, the pair felt warmer and more confident. Everything about them seemed slightly changed for the better. While marvelling at the effects of the feathers, and the beauty of the feathers themselves, with just a tiny bit of heatless fire around the edges, it took a moment for Carson to process what he saw next.

“Whoa...” started Carson.

“Yeah, I know!” Mitch replied.

“No, I mean your wings - look at them!”

At that moment, Mitch looked at his new pegasus wings. He didn’t notice anything about a change in shape, but what he did notice was that his primaries, the long, large feathers on the edges of the wings were deep crimson with fiery orange shafts, just as the phoenix feather he was wearing.

”Whoa,” Mitch agreed, continuing, “You know, it’s probably the same with you, it’s just that since you’re already red, you can barely tell.”

To confirm what Mitch said, Philomena hopped over to Carson and, with her starboard wing, pointed out fiery orange shafts in the primaries identical to hers and Mitch’s.

Emboldened, Mitch crouched down, and shot into the sky like a bullet. Though not completely perfect, he could fly adequately well, and Carson soon joined in.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever known before!” shouted Mitch over the wind in his ears.

“Yahoooooo!” exclaimed Carson in exhilaration, attempting a downward corkscrew, but pulled up too late and, skidding on the ground, ended up with his face planted into the trunk of a tree. A muffled “I’m okay!” came from the mess of a pegasus after Mitch had gasped in horror.

“Carson!” yelled Mitch, racing towards his friend regardless of what he had said. As Mitch stood by Carson, after which he lifted his head from the trunk, now with a practically flat face and a wall-eyed expression, Mitch laughed at the former and said,”There’s one thing checked off of your bucket list, Carson”

“What do you mean?” Carson asked as Philomena lighted down beside the pair.

“Your face - it’s derped!”

“Well, that would explain why there’s two of you. Ha!- Owww, my head...”

“Well, after slamming into a tree like that, It’s a wonder you’re still even conscious!”

“Speaking of which, my head doesn’t hurt so much. Must be those cartoon physics!” Carson concluded.

“Must be.” agreed Mitch.

Philomena chirped. She then jerked her head, as if telling them to follow her. Afterwards, she took off in flame, and started circling the duo.

“You think we should follow her?” asked Mitch.

“Well, duh, she’s a phoenix! Phoenixes are always good guys! Besides, she’s waiting for us; let’s go!” With that, Carson jumped and flew off after Philomena, with Mitch trailing closely behind. The phoenix was careful not to go too fast, for fear of them not being able to follow.

***

“Hey Mitch, where do you think we’re going?” asked Carson.

“How should I know?” Mitch answered with another question.

Carson shrugged.

Philomena chirped again, and pointed to a familiar cloud formation - a huge bundle of different clouds, with one enormous cumulus professing rainbow waterfalls, and building formations. Despite these, there was one thing dead wrong about the place.

“Cloudsdale,” the two said in unision.

“But I sense something wrong about it,” Carson said.

“Me too, but I can’t quite put my fing- er... hoof on it.”

Carson laughed. “Well, I guess we’ll find out when we get there!

They found out, alright. As they neared the city of clouds, they heard nothing of the bustle of a city. In fact, other than ambient noises, such as the wind and rainbow waterfalls, the entire city seemed completely deserted and eerily silent.

“Is anypony there?” called Carson.

“Quiet! There might be somepony there, but I doubt that it would be anyone we would want to see!” scolded Mitch.

“Wait, listen!” replied Carson.

Indeed, there was a sound: a voice, faint but existant. It sounded muffled and trapped. The voice sounded obviously female, and also hopeful, but uneager. It sounded as if any chance of a struggle had long since faded from her thoughts, and that this was just a hallucination.

“Where are you?” called Mitch

“I’m over here! Help me!” cried the tired voice.

Philomena called out to the pair of pegasus ponies. She started flying towards where the sound was and, once again, signaled for the two to follow her. They did and came to a pile of rather humorous rubble. (The fact that the rubble was composed partly of marble, but mostly of clouds was what made it humorous.)

“Are you there?” called Carson to the pile.

“Yeah! Help me! I can’t move!” the voice told them.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out!” Mitch yelled to the voice.

If viewed from a normal point of view, the situation would be rather odd - two cartoon pegasi rescuing the source of a voice trapped under a pile of clouds - but in this case, the two took this seriously; somepony was in there, and they needed to get them out! They dug, but most the cloud rubble was much too heavy to be lifted.

“Mitch, help me lift this one,” called Carson, pointing to a large, but not-too-heavy piece of rubble.

They proceeded like this for an hour or more, exerting all of their strength finding ways to diminish the pile without harming the voice. Finally, out of the darkish-white monotony of construction cloud, an anomaly appeared - a cyan hoof!

“Is this your hoof?” asked a tired Mitch to the voice.

“Yes! Get the rest off!” came an even more exhausted answer.

“Okay, Mitch. We need to go about doing this carefully. Get the small stuff off and I’ll use the bar I found to help move the larger stuff,” said Carson, for he had, indeed, found a bar of a similar cloud-substance and had been using that to leverage some of the more heavy rubble.

After another short while, another part of the voice’s body was uncovered. “Is that what I think it is?” asked Carson.

“I think it is,” replied Mitch.

“A rainbow mane?” continued Carson.

“Rainbow Dash?” Mitch asked to the voice.

“How do you know my name?” replied a very tired Rainbow Dash.

Mitch was repeating, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh...” while Carson stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed in wonderment.

“Mitch,”

“What?”

“We need to get her out; this is serious; I mean, it’s Rainbow Dash!”

Mitch paused for a moment, then agreed, “Yeah.”

Now that they knew the source of the voice, they worked all the more vigorously, though still being careful not to injure the pegasus trapped inside.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out!” Carson yelled to that cyan pony that we all know so well.

In their vigor, they made quick work of the remaining rubble; at least enough so that Rainbow Dash could get (or really, be pulled) out. They would yank, push, and pull until a cloud was off, then go onto the next one. All three would get excited every time some segment of Rainbow Dash’s blue body would be uncovered. At last, Rainbow Dash was out. Unfortunately, she did not come out completely whole - her left foreleg was broken.

She was bruised and battered all over and her leg hurt even more. She would not normally be feeling this, but her exhaustion and dehydration made her hurt the most terribly she ever had, even worse than the only other time she had been really injured - when she learned that reading was awesome.

She was practically crying, not because of pain, but because of emotional stress; anyone would, after being trapped in a stone prison with no chance of survival. “Wow...,” Rainbow Dash started shakily, suddenly ending with, “Ow, my leg!” bending to the ground to alleviate the pressure.

“What is it?” Asked Carson and Mitch simultaneously.

“I think it’s broken,” she said, motioning to her skewed foreleg.

“Okay, I think I can do this,” Carson started, remembering the Emergency Preparedness he had learned. “I’m going to make a splint. Get two stiff things: Sticks, or something like that. I’ll also need a long piece of cloth to tie and stuff.”

“We also need a stretcher. Find another one of these poles and another piece of cloth, big this time,” he continued, mentioning the pole he had used to leverage the debris.

“Got it!” replied Mitch, flying off to find the supplies. Philomena also flew off, probably to help.

With only Carson and Dash, he decided to ask a few questions.

“So, what happened?”

Rainbow Dash shuddered, remembering some horrible thing. “I don’t really know; I was here at Cloudsdale visiting my mom and dad, and we were at this building that was pretty old. That was when... it happened.”

“It what?”

“I was getting to that- Ow!”

“Oh. Go on.”

“So, suddenly, everything went almost completely black,” she said, her voice suddenly raised, “I could hardly see anything! Ponies were screaming everywhere!”

“I’m not really sure what happened next, all I know is that this huge thing that I couldn’t see was destroying everything, and there kept getting less and less screaming, and then the building caved in on me! I could still hear the screaming for a moment, but then I blacked out. When I woke up, It was still dark, but that was because I was trapped- Ow! My leg again!”

Carson took another look at the broken leg. “It doesn’t look pretty.”

“It doesn’t feel very pretty, either!” replied the cyan pegasus.

At that moment, Mitch and Philomena returned with the supplies. “Ptui!” he said, spitting out the ingredients, “I’m back!” he proclaimed.

“Perfect timing, thank you! Now, Rainbow Dash, I’m going to have to set your leg.”

“What.”

“Yes,” he picked something up from the ground. “Bite on this,” he said, placing it in her mouth.

Carson grabbed onto the injured leg, and set it with a twist and a not-very-nice sounding crack. Needless to say, the rubble was bit on very hard.

“Now,” The red pony continued, “Hand me those sticks.”

“Sticks,” said Mitch, sliding the sticks to Carson.

Carson placed the sticks along the rainbow-maned pegasus’s broken leg. “Now I need the long cloth.”

Philomena chirped, probably saying “cloth” in phoenix, while giving said cloth to Carson.

Carson snugly wrapped and tied the cloth along the leg, effectively immobilizing it.

“Now I need the long pole and the cloth,” said Carson, grabbing the other pole.

“Pllff,” muttered Mitch out of the sides of his mouth as he gave the pole to Carson. Philomena handed over the larger cloth.

“Alright, now help me with this. I need to wrap the edges of the cloth around the pole and keep them that way.”

“Okay, how do I go about doing this?” Mitch responded.

“Put one edge of the cloth over the pole,” Carson began, narrating a demonstration, “And roll it a bit.”

“Okay, so, get it over... And roll it. Got it!” Mitch said after he finished.

“Annnd... How the crap are we going to carry this thing?” Carson trailed off, realizing that this makeshift stretcher was made for human hands. “Greeeat. Well Rainbow Dash, can you walk?”

“Does it look like I can walk?” was her reply.

Carson sized up the rainbow-maned pegasus and said, “Oh. Well then, we’re screwed.”

Mitch jumped into the conversation: “Wait, if we put both of the ends we would hold onto our backs, then that’ll work!”

Carson thought for a moment. “Wow, I didn’t think of that! Thanks!”

After some careful maneuvering, they got rainbow dash onto the stretcher with Carson and Mitch carrying her.

“So what do we do next?” asked Mitch.

“We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess,” replied Carson.

END OF CHAPTER ONE

Unexpected Company

Chapter 2

Unexpected Company

“So... What are we gonna’ do next?” Rainbow Dash broke the silence after some amount of minutes. They had been walking along the (expectedly sparse) streets of the pegasus city Cloudsdale due to a catastrophic event of which, apparently, only she survived. Not only that, but she didn’t see the source of this thing that happened. The name of the city did not deceive; the foundation was entirely made of clouds, and of course, floating in the sky. The two had found Rainbow Dash buried under a pile of cloud rubble for who knows how long with no hope of survival, since literally nopony was around to help.

“Aren’t you, you know, injured and in shock?” Asked the red pegasus named Carson in confusion.

“Well, yeah, but when you’re just sitting here, it’s boring!”

Carson and Mitch simply stared, confused at the fact that the pegasus wasn’t quivering in fear, or anything of the likes, but then again, this was Rainbow Dash. When the two realised this, they just shook their heads in wonder.

Carson and Mitch, once humans but now two pegasi, were carrying the injured Rainbow Dash on a makeshift stretcher. As they were walking, Carson was thinking. He was thinking some basic survival, because living is always good.

“Okay, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do: We’re going to find some food, water, and shelter,” said Carson. He thought for a moment and finished, “If all else fails, we can just drink rainbows.”

“Umm, I don’t think that would be a very good idea... dude,” replied Rainbow. “Hey, I didn’t get your names!” she realised, requesting for the knowledge.

“Oh, okay. I’m Mitch and he’s Carson,” said that orange pegasus named Mitch.

“Cool,” resolved Dash.

The three traveled for a few more moments, Carson and Mitch walking and, as previously mentioned, carrying Rainbow Dash on a stretcher due to a broken leg and other small injuries, besides.

Carson had an idea, stopping and saying, “Hey, Rainbow Dash.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know anywhere with shelter and food?”

“There’s bound to be plenty of places in a city like this,” replied the rainbow-maned pony.

“So just keep walking?” asked Mitch.

“Yeah, I guess,” resolved Rainbow.

“Keep your eyes out for a good spot,” finished Carson.

Once again, they walked in silence for a moment. Of course, the silence did not go unbroken for long. Soon they heard the calls of another pony. That’s right, another pony. Not just that, but two ponies. The three looked at each other in amazement, all wondering the same thing: Who might these two ponies be? They would soon find out.

And they did, for soon they came into view. Two pegasi: a stallion, nearly white with the contrast of a nearly black mane and tail, and the other a mare, orange with a similarly fiery-orange colored mane and tail. Both had lightning bolt cutie marks, the colt’s with wings, the mare’s with fire. In other words, two of the most famous and greatest fliers in Equestria - the Wonderbolts Soarin and Spitfire.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened a considerable amount. The other two looked at each other and said, “Whoa.”

Carson called back to them, “There’s ponies over here! We have an injury and need some help!”

From a distance, the trio could see that the two Wonderbolts looked at each other for a moment and then flew towards the three pegasi. They flew with the considerable speed and skill of which a Wonderbolt would be expected of. Needless to say, the two were with the newfound ponies quickly.

Rainbow Dash quickly regained her composure, and did her best to look cool, despite her being carried on a stretcher.

“You have no idea how relieved I am to find another pony in this city!” Spitfire said. “It’s like everypony disappeared after whatever happened.”

“I know, right?" agreed Carson.

“Wait, so you’re not... shaken at all at this?”

“Well, we actually just got here,” replied Mitch.

Soarin’ and Spitfire looked hopeful.

“So there’s other ponies left?” asked Soarin’.

“We don’t know. Like Mitch said, we just got here,” said Carson.

The two Wonderbolts looked confused at this.

One was about to ask a question when Mitch said simply, “Long story.”

They seemed satisfied by that at the moment. “So, I see your injured friend is our champion young-flier,” said Spitfire, changing the subject.

Rainbow Dash looked a little prideful at this. “Yup, that’s me, but wow, you still remember?”

“Well, you sort of saved our lives,” Soarin’ said, joining the conversation.

“Yeah, I guess I did,” said Rainbow, blushing slightly.

“So what happened this time?” asked Spitfire humorously.

“Oh, not much. A building just caved in, trapping and almost killing me,” said Rainbow, sarcastically nonchalant.

Spitfire’s and Sorin’s eyes widened at that. “And you aren’t in shock or anything?”

“Well, I am, but do you know how boring it is to not be able to do anything?” Rainbow said exasperatedly.

“Yes, actually, We do. Speed and the ground don’t exactly mix,” Soarin’ replied.

“Oh,” she said simply.

Spitfire once again changed the subject, “Okay, there’s Rainbow over here, but you are Mitch and...?” she asked, referring to Carson previously mentioning his friend’s name.

“Carson,” Carson said.

“Oh, okay,” replied Spitfire strangely questioningly. “Those are some strange names,” she added under her breath.

Mitch cut in - “Okay! Introductions over. Now... do you have someplace to bed down for the night?”

It was Sorin’s turn to reply. “Well, we do sort of have our own flying grounds, cafeteria, and dormitory, along with the rest of our five-million-plus cubic-foot building.”

“Oh,” Mitch said simply. “They didn’t show that on TV.”

Spitfire laughed until she realised something - “Huh?”

“Remember that ‘long story’ thing?” Carson asked.

Now Spitfire simply said, “Oh.”

Carson smiled, but suddenly became bewildered. “Wait, you measure in feet?”

Rainbow Dash was, again, getting bored. “Hey! let’s stop talkin’, and let’s start walkin’! You said you had a cafeteria? We’re all hungry!”

Eveypony had a laugh at that.

***

They had been walking, again for a while, (this might get old,) when Carson struck up a new conversation. “So, Mitch, I heard that our names are weird in Equestria!”

Spitfire apologised, “Oh, you heard that?”

“Well, yeah. Besides, a name like ‘Carson’ doesn’t quite sound right in this world.”

“You’re going to have to tell me this ‘long story’ at some point.”

“Yes, yes I will. Anyways Mitch, we need Equestrian names. You know, to fit in.”

“Good idea,” Mitch replied, “But what to call ourselves?”

Carson thought for a moment, confused. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

“I’m not even going to ask,” Soarin’ said, mostly to himself.

While they were walking, the duo could not help but notice the utter emptiness of the streets of Cloudsdale. Some buildings were floating by themselves, some were together, and others were arranged in a escalated floor system around the main cloud. Despite that, there was a main highway, just incase anypony had to walk. A good number of buildings, especially businesses, were stationed about this road. Some were decrepit and crumbling, or even completely demolished; presumably from the recent seemly cataclysmic event. All of it was completely and utterly devoid of life. Not even the rainbows had color - they were all grayscale. It was rather depressing, really.

The two former humans took in all of this, not really knowing what to think about it. It seemed like a cartoon version of the photograph Boulevard du Temple. The forlorn emptiness of it all was ominous.

Mitch had a question burning in his brain. “Hey Rainbow?”

“Yeah?”

“Where does the color from rainbows come from?”

Rainbow looked at him funny, as if it should be obvious as to what the answer should be.

“You know, at some point, I really have to tell you that ‘long story’.”

“Well, they basically grind up a bunch of magically imbued dyes,” said Rainbow, having expected this to be common knowledge.

“So the video was right!” Carson butted in.

Replied Mitch, “But in the video, they ground up crayons!”

“Dyes, crayons, big difference!”

Mitch simply facehooved.

As they passed what seemed to be the three-hundredth building, Mitch became exasperated, calling out, “Hey, Spitfire!”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s this enormous building Soarin’ was taking about?”

“Up.”

“Darn,” said Mitch while looking up. His eyes slowly widened.

A few a hundred feet up stood an absolutely enormous building built similar in style to the Greeks. Surprisingly, it seemed untouched by whatever happened. The main entrance was a grand ten feet tall, but seemed twice that due to the height of the ponies. Unfortunately, little past that could be seen due to the fact that it was sitting on top of a cloud which was, as previously stated, several hundred feet up.

“Darn is right,” agreed Carson. “How the heck are we going to get up there?”

It was Soarin’ who replied. “We fly!” and then he realised that there was some incapacitated ponies in his presence - one by pretty much everything being injured and two more carrying her. Now it was Sorin’s turn to say it. “Darn. Well, I guess we should help ‘em up,” he concluded, looking skyward toward the Wonderbolt’s campus.

“Uh, yeah,” replied Spitfire.

“Then let’s get to this!” said Soarin’ energetically.

Carson took charge. “Okay, Spitfire and Soarin’, you two get under the stretcher, but make sure you have room to flap your wings.”

At Carson’s directive, the two did what he said, seeing as it was a plausible course of action.

“Me and Mitch will spread out a bit to give you room, but we’ll only be able to flap one wing each.”

Once everypony was in place, Carson started. “Okay, we need to flap in unison if we’re going to get this rainbow-manéd pegasus off this cloud,” he gestured, “ and into that cloud,” he said, slipping into a funny accent. (Unfortunately, I cannot figure out how to describe, it. Just know that it’s funny.) “Now... Flap! Flap! Flap!”

They began flapping and chanting slowly - at about 100 beats per minute - but they gradually got faster and more efficient, peaking at about 150 beats per minute.

“Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap!”

They fell into a rhythm which quickly became engraved into their immediate memories. They soon had no need chant, as they were all in perfect unision.

Mitch cheered. “Woohoo! It’s working!”

As they fell into a routine, Carson’s mind started getting sidetracked, thinking about random things. As they were nearing the top, he suddenly knew what his name would be.

“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed, stopping flapping and breaking the routine. All too late, he realised this, plummeting to the ground. Soarin’, Spitfire, and Mitch were fortunate enough to get out before they lost momentum, but Rainbow Dash was unable to fly.

“Watch out!” she yelled as she, on her stretcher, crashed midair into Carson, bringing him down below her.

“Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap!” could be heard from below Rainbow and her stretcher as they plummeted towards the cloud highway they had just so recently left.

“Okay, flap, Carson!” he yelled to himself. He flapped, but was unable to do anything because of the pony-on-stretcher on top of him. He sighed saying, “This is going to hurt.” he said, defeated for the moment.

Carson closed his eyes tightly as, unbeknownst to him, Rainbow did the same. A definite *WHUMP- CRASH!* could be heard as Carson hit the ground hard and then broke the cyan pegasus’s fall.

Despite the seeming tragicness of the event, it was actually rather humorous. The rainbow-maned pegasus was no more injured than before, due to her fall being broken by a certain red pony. Said pony was sprawled underneath Rainbow and her stretcher with only his legs showing. “Ow,” said Carson monotonically.

His legs could be seen to be propping his body up. After he was standing, he carefully slid out from under Rainbow Dash. Once again, he had a flat face and derped eyes. He had an annoyed expression when he said, “This is gonna’ get old.” He then gained a thoughtful look on his visage and said optimistically, “On the bright side, that could have gone a whole lot worse. Hey Rainbow Dash, you okay?”

“Yeah, no worse than before, thanks to you.”

“Well, it was nothing,” he joked, still dizzy and in pain.

Apparently, the other three had finally decided to fly down and try to help.

Mitch was the first to respond. “Oh my gosh, Carson! Are you okay?”

Carson didn’t appear completely there. “No more for me thanks, I’m drivin’,” he said, his voice slurred. After proclaiming this, he promptly fell unconscious and unceremoniously faceplanted into the cloud layer he was standing on.

***

It was still raining outside. Thunder struck as Spry Canyon woke with a start. “They’re here!” he whispered hopefully.

Find a Pet. I Mean Friend.

Chapter 3

Find a Friend

Far away in a building on top of a cloud, a red pegasus bolted awake from unconsciousness. He heard a nearby pony cry out in pain as he quickly sat up.

“Ow, you hit my face, Carson!” said Mitch.

“Sorry, Mi- whoa! Where am I?” Carson asked as he realized that he was not where he went to sleep (or in his case, fell unconscious after what should have been an almost fatal fall)

“You’re in one of the dormitory rooms on the Wonderbolt’s campus. Ha, it definitely wasn’t easy for Soarin’ and Spitfire getting two ponies that can’t fly up here!”

He looked around and saw that, indeed, he was in a bed in a room that could be considered large for a dorm room. It had a dresser and a closet, both obsolete at the moment. The walls were white and blue with yellow stripes. The ceiling was painted to look like the sky. The bedsheets were all blue with the blanket having a large lightning bolt emblem. There were also three mannequins, presumably for some of the different uniforms the Wonderbolts wore.

“Oh, I just remembered! I didn’t get a chance to tell you what I figured out!”

Rainbow Dash walked in (with a limp and a cast because of her injuries,) saying, “Yeah, you were busy saving my tail!”

They had a small laugh.

“Hey, Rainbow Dash! Good to see you on your feet! It means that we don’t have to carry you!” Carson greeted her jokingly. “Anyways, I need to tell you my new name - Eagletone!”

“Sweet, man. I still gotta come up with mine. I’ll make sure to call you that and spread the word.” Mitch replied enthusiastically.

“Whatever you say,” Rainbow simply said, walking out. “I’ll tell the others Eagletone’s awake.” She smirked.

The two smiled, then switched into serious mode. “Eagletone, we’ve stumbled into Equestria at an extremely opportune time for the ponies. I think it no coincidence.”

Eagletone nodded.

Mitch continued, “Oh, and by the way, I found out that in this world, even with cartoon physics, you should be dead. There’s some other force at play, and that force is these phoenix feathers,” he said, matter-of-factly as he looked at the glorious red feather with an orange shaft around his neck. “I asked and found out that they do things like quicken healing, make you heat-resistant, and increase your race’s ability; In our case, that would be flying. That feather saved your life. Twice.”

“Oh,” Eagletone said in surprise. “Well, that makes a lot more sense than anything else I could think of. Now, with this ‘stumbling into Equestria’ thing, it’s definitely no coincidence, but just to make sure, I have to know. There must have been some sort of prophecy or something. I mean, in a world this magical, how could there not be prophets?”

Mitch mulled this over for a bit. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I think it’s time to tell them our ‘long story.’”

***

“Soarin’! Spitfire! Man, it’s a good thing we found you so quickly.” They had been searching the halls for around a minute before Mitch and Eagletone found the two Wonderbolts.

“Oh hey, Eagletone,” Spitfire teased.

“Yeah, I’m awake.”

“But seriously, you are one lucky colt,” said Soarin’. “If it weren’t for that phoenix feather, you’d be a goner right now. You know, they don’t give those things out to just anypony.”

Mitch replied, “About that, remember our ‘long story?’ Well, it’s about time we told somepony.”

“Hah, then I’ll know what this ‘TV’ thing is.” Spitfire joked.

“Well, it’s no use yelling from across the hall, come over here!”

Both groups walked toward each other in order not to have to shout.

“So... Where do we start?” asked Mitch.

Eagletone answered, “How about the part where we tell them we’re not ponies by nature?”

Soarin’ butted in in great confusion. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah, we sort of came here through an interdimensional wormhole in our dreams,” admitted Mitch.

That only served to more thoroughly confuse the two real ponies.

Eagletone sighed. This was probably going to take a while. “Okay, first things first. We dropped onto a path inside the wormhole, the path dropped off, we dropped off, got turned into ponies, and landed on the ground. Okay, now that that’s out of the way, perhaps I should explain what we were before the wormhole.”

“Yeah, that might help just a bit.” Spitfire told him.

“So, basically we’re humans. Homo Sapiens. We’re bipedal primates, so we’re distantly related to monkeys. Except that most of us don’t slouch. Or climb trees. Or have fur. We have language extremely similar to Modern Equestrian, as I’m guessing it’s called, and technology even more advanced. A TV, or television, is just one of those inventions. Basically, you can send a bunch of data at the speed of light through invisible, low-power rays called radio waves. That translates into pictures and sound on a digital screen.”

“That sort of makes sense, I guess,” said Soarin’, still rather confused.

“But even though we don’t have fur, guys do have facial hair,” grinned Eagletone

“Yeah, only the really manly stallions here have beards on top of their fur. Anyways, I’m guessing that you’re either from really far away or another dimension.”

“Probably, yeah. But just to be sure, have you ever heard of the Milky Way Galaxy?”

Soarin’ and Spitfire looked at each other with shocked expressions. Spitfire spoke up. “There was a prophecy- “

“Totally called it!” said Eagletone, pumping a hoof.

“ -That there would be three - two pegasi and a unicorn - to come from another Earth nearest to the star Solaris. Not even the greatest oracle, literally of all time, could know when or why they would come, but she did know that they - you - would be very important to the saving of both our worlds.”

“Three?” asked Mitch, confused for obvious reasons.

“Apparently, one of us three can’t walk on clouds or fly,” Eagletone joked sarcastically.

“Oh, yeah. That.”

“Well, before we head off on another journey, I. AM. STARVING. Seriously, I need food!”

The group of four laughed.

“Besides,” added Mitch, pulling out a fairly thick stack of papers, “It says right here in the script that we have to find Fluttershy first.”

Eagletone stopped in his tracks. “Script?” he asked, bewildered.

“What script?” Mitch replied with the papers somehow having disappeared.

They continued to walk through the halls, undisturbed by any pony that might have been here sightseeing, seeing as they were all presumably not alive at the moment. The halls really were grand, with a color scheme consisting mostly of royal blue and electric yellow racing stripes with lots of white marble and the hard, cloud-like material. They were wide and tall enough for a team of six to fly on each side, making for easy and safe transportation to any place they needed to get to. As they were all pegasi, the four flew through the halls to reach the cafeteria more quickly. Mitch and Eagletone were once again reminded of the loneliness and emptiness of the usually bustling environment.

What happened for everypony to be gone? Eagletone had to wonder. He and Mitch had yet to find out completely.

***

As they walked into the cafeteria, they found out that it was not so enormous as one would expect. It was actually rather small; only the Wonderbolts ate there. The ever-present color scheme of the Wonderbolts, blue and yellow, was also painted in here.

Another Wonderbolt, a white-furred, blonde mare with a simple lightning bolt for a cutie mark, greeted them. “Soarin’! Spitfire! Thank goodness you came back! I was worried you wouldn’t! You didn’t run into any trouble, did you?”

Spitfire replied, “Of course we came back, Rapidfire. We didn’t run into any trouble. Actually, there was literally no life whatsoever, except these two and Rainbow Dash with a broken leg. Remember her?”

“Well, yeah, she saved our lives,” Rapidfire told her.

“Okay, you three done catching up, because I am dang hungry!” Eagletone butted in.

“And who might you be, survivor?” asked Rapidfire.

“I’m Mitch and this is Eagletone.”

Something along the lines of, “Mitch? Weird name,” slipped out under her breath.

“So, if this is the Wonderbolt’s cafeteria, you must have some nice food here. Even if you don’t, I’m hungry enough I could eat a h- ah... tree! Yeah, a tree.”

“You want it, you make it.”

Eagletone and Mitch obliged, stepping into the kitchen and quickly finding the foodstuffs.

“Don’t they at least have some bacon, or something?” Eagletone muttered from under his breath.

Mitch was the voice of reason. “Eagletone, they’re ponies. Herbivores; and so are we, now. I think we should at least try a hay sandwich to see if we are.”

The pair each took two slices of bread, some hay, and Mitch took some lilies, making a sandwich.

“I don’t like my sandwiches with toppings back home, and I doubt I would here,” Eagletone explained, taking a bite of his sandwich and chewing tentatively.

“Suit yourself,” said Mitch, wondering why his friend had such strange taste, and copying the action of Eagletone.

“Not bad,” Mitch mumbled around his sandwich.

“Sandvich! Om nom nom!” said Eagletone in a bassy, gruff, pseudo-Russian accent while devouring his victual.

When Mitch was finished, he commented, “You know, it’s amazing how we can get so much energy from something seemingly insubstantial.”

Eagletone let out a hearty belch, much to everypony’s amusement. “If I can let out something like that, they’ve gotta be doing something right with those ingredients!”

“Punches!” Mitch suddenly exclaimed, hitting his larger friend on the forearm.

“Ow!” said Eagletone, realising, “Ha, I guess I deserved that.”

“Yes, yes you did,” Mitch told him, smirking.

“Well,” said Eagletone, beginning to walk off, “We should be leaving about now. Like you said, Mitch, we need to find Fluttershy.”

“I said that?”

“You did,” Soarin’ commented.

“It is a perfectly cromulent idea,” Eagletone noted.

Mitch simply shook his head slowly. “Only you would know words like that, Eagle.”

They both made their farewells, starting with Eagletone. “Well, I do believe we have to set off. Goodbye, our new pony friends,” he said, waving a hoof and walking away.

“Hey Soarin’?” asked Mitch.

“Yeah?”

“Remember the joke I told you.”

Soarin’ started getting teary-eyed. “I will,” he replied emotionally.

They were almost out the cafeteria door when Mitch stopped suddenly and whispered something in Eagletone’s ear, evoking a loud, “Crap!” from him.

Eagle turned around. “Hey, my friend here,” he began, motioning to the orange pegasus, “Just pointed out that we have no idea where we’re going.”

Spitfire jerked her head, remembering something. “Oh yeah! We’re supposed to take you to Appleoosa where you’ll further progress in your quest.”

Mitch’s response was enthusiastic. “Well then, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!”

They all flew down the blue halls like a flock of birds. Eagletone and Mitch continued to let their eyes wander, watching the doors and streaks of yellow fly by.

They exited the metaphorical castle of flying. The four then flew down to the cloud layer of the enormous city of Cloudsdale. It was still forlorn and empty as they had left it, completely barren of any sign of life.

“Is it just me, or is this really depressing?” commented Mitch.

The other three agreed with them. As they were nearing a corner, Eagletone got distracted by a small noise.

“Heeeelllp!”

He instantly turned his head to the sound. “Fluttershy?”

*THUNK!* He slammed into a building on the corner the others had rounded.

The other three took note of this, and turned back to him.

“You okay?” asked Spitfire.

“I feel pretty good for having flown into a wall,” he replied sarcastically.

“Well, why didn’t you turn?” asked Soarin’.

Eagletone motioned towards a half-destroyed building back a small ways. “I heard a voice.” They all looked surprised at this. Mitch’s face in particular lit up as Eagle went on, “I think it was Fluttershy’s!”

Mitch responded quickly. “We have to help her. Come on!” He quickly flew up to the rubble pile and called her name. “Fluttershy!” Listening closely, his ears and eyebrows suddenly went up - she was inside!

Soarin’ bucked the door open and they flew inside, finding the buttercup pegasus behind a pile of destroyed cloud-building that was blocking the doorway to the room she was in.

“Oh, thank goodness you heard my voice! I wasn’t sure that you would,” Fluttershy said as excitedly as her mellow tones could get.

Mitch was worried. “Fluttershy, are you hurt? Can you move? We need to get you out!”

Fluttershy responded calmly, “Oh, I’m not hurt, I opened the door to get out and the ceiling above the exit caved in. I tried to move the rocks, but I just couldn’t. I’m really hungry and thirsty!”

Mitch felt cold fury for whatever being would force Fluttershy to be deprived of necessities. “We’ll get you out,” his tone icy, “Eagle, on three, you and I run a path through all this stuff.”

Eagletone was unsure of how effective that would be, but he decided to go along.

“One,” Mitch was set. Eagletone decided to set himself as well. “Two,” the duo tensed themselves. “THREE!” Mitch rocketed towards the wall at speeds seeming to defy the laws of physics, completely outpacing Eagletone, screaming and crashing through the blocked doorway, ending up embedded in the other side of the room he had just entered.

“Did it work?” Asked a muffled Mitch.

A path of destruction lay behind him. All three stared at it in awe as Eagletone laconically said, “Uh... Yeah. It did.”

***

Due to poor planning, the group had left almost before sundown, with no supplies. They had realized after rescuing Fluttershy that they needed to think the whole thing through and bring some things they would need before they set off, so all five (Fluttershy having joined them) returned to the Wonderbolt’s dormitory to stock up.

“So Fluttershy, what are you doing in Cloudsdale? I mean, don’t you live in Ponyville?” asked Mitch.

Eagletone whispered to Mitch, “Don’t you think that sounds kind of creepy? The part where you know where she lives?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mitch realized. “We just happen to know an unusual amount about Ponyville. Don’t ask how.”

Fluttershy responded, “Well, I was coming with Rainbow Dash. She was visiting her parents for Cloudsday and I was visiting mine.”

“Wait, what’s this ‘Clouds-Day’ thing? It sounds like some sort of holiday.” Eagletone was confused about this.

“Well, you might know that all three ponies found Equestria on the same day, but it wasn’t until later that our different communities were founded. Last week was the anniversary of the founding of Cloudsdale.”

“Oh! That makes sense, now,” said Eagle as he understood.

“But then there’s the big question,” Mitch said, pausing for dramatic effect.

“What happened?”

The yellow pegasus’ expression became that of terror. “It was so scary...”

“Fluttershy,” Eagle told her, “We need to know. We’re supposed to stop it.”

Fluttershy swallowed her fear (as much as she could, anyways) and told them. “Well, I was in my parent’s house, waiting for them to come home. They were getting groceries. All of the sudden, the scariest, darkest shadow covered all of Cloudsdale. I normally would have hidden, but I was completely frozen, and so was everypony else.”

“Everything was so dark, I couldn’t see anything except for two big, red, evil eyes that were glowing. They were moving around everywhere, and when they saw a pony, they came to them. They looked so scared as the eyes came at them. And when they passed them, the pony was... gone!” Fluttershy was crying and in hysterics by this point.

“When there was a pony inside a building, suddenly, the building was destroyed. Whatever it was, it... ate... everypony. And when it saw me,” she said, sobbing uncontrollably, “It came after me! It hit the building, but it wasn’t destroyed. It hit it again, and the doorway to the room I was in got blocked. I noticed that everything wasn’t as dark. It was as if it was weakened. It came at my parent’s house one last time, but right before it hit, it stopped. The monster yelled and screamed, but it couldn’t move! Finally, it was pulled right through the cloud, and I could see Cloudsdale again, but it wasn’t Cloudsdale. Lots of buildings were broken. The monster even stole the color from the rainbows! Worst of all, there wasn’t a single pony. Not a single living thing, besides me. Not even my parents!”

As the buttercup pegasus sat there crying, Eagletone was contemplating what to do about it. He decided upon hugging her to make her feel better.

Fluttershy sniffed. “Thanks.”

If something could be more angry than Mitch from before, it was Mitch now. Now, he knew what had done it. Now he knew that not only had it deprived Fluttershy of food and water, but had done so much more. It had killed. It had probably killed hundreds. It was evil. And he had to stop it, no matter what.

“Eagletone.” His voice was calm. His voice was fury.

“Yeah?”

“Pack your bags and wake up at sunrise. We’re going to destroy that monstrosity, no matter what it takes.” He was looking straight ahead, his brow drawn together, his face a scowl. Nothing was going to stop him from stopping it.

“You got it.”

***

Day was upon him as Spry set out to do his daily work in Appleoosa. He stopped walking just as soon as he had started. “They’re coming!” he whispered to himself, starting off again.

What's With All the Humans?

Chapter 4

What’s With All the Humans?

The sight was like one you would see in a movie. Or read in a book. The sun was rising on the faces of four ponies with packs. Four pegasi - Eagletone, Mitch, Soarin’ and Spitfire. They were standing on a landing on an enormous building in the air, ready to fly. You could almost hear the epic music. They jumped and dove long, nearly hitting the hard cloud below, pulling up before they could crash. They flew up and off, over the enormous, abandoned city of a cloud that was Cloudsdale. They soon cleared that and continued lower at top speed, until Eagletone tired. They rested and continued at more travel-worthy speeds. The four sped past grassy slope, plains, forest, lake until all became a blur.

No amount of weariness of the wing could deter Mitch. He could only think about it. The abomination. The killer. The evil. Few words could describe it. None were positive. One was its name: Oblivion. Mitch was urged onward by this thought - His only desire was to destroy Oblivion.

Eventually, other desires crept into the minds of all four ponies; mainly the fact that it was very late, and despite this evil thing, they still needed sleep. Soarin’ was especially distracted by all the good places to make camp. He kept pointing them out. “Here’s a good one. Oh, another one. Hey, guys! I found the best one yet!”

The other three finally succumbed to his insistence and decided to break out camp in a large cave that seemed to have been made just for that purpose. When they arrived, though, they found that they were not alone. In fact, not only was this cave already inhabited, it was inhabited by ponies!

Two ponies were currently in the cave, one with arc blue fur and brown hair, the other with turquoise fur and blond hair. Both were male and seemed bored out of their minds. Bored out of their minds, that is, until our group of pegasi showed up.

Spitfire and one of the ponies in the cave spoke in unision. “Ponies? Out here?”

Each group stared at the other, both equally dumbfounded that there was other fully sapient and intelligent life around them

Spitfire spoke, interrupting everypony’s wonderment. “Friend or foe?”

“Wha-” the arc blue one began.

“Friend or foe,” she repeated solidly.

“Well, we could ask the same of you,” replied the turquoise unicorn.

Spitfire was unimpressed.

The turquoise one thought for a moment. “Well, do you support the Royal Princesses?”

“We all do,” Soarin’ replied. The others nodded in agreement.

“Well, we do too, I guess. I never really asked the other guys.”

“Close enough,” Spitfire said, dropping her hostility. “Wait, other guys? You mean there’s more of you?”

“Yeah. Two more,” said the arc blue Earth Pony. “I’m Josh, by the way.” His mark was an assortment of differently sized gears, presumably moving in synergy.

“And I’m Cache,” said the turquoise unicorn. His mark was a the number “101010” in simple green text. Eagletone realized that it was 42 in binary.

“Great, more humans?” Spitfire asked rhetorically.

“How did you know?” Josh asked in surprize for obvious reasons.

“Nopony is named ‘Josh,’ though I do know of a pony named ‘Filthy Rich,’” Spitfire replied.

Cache drew his brow together in annoyance, seeing as his name obviously wasn’t that kind of ‘Cache.’

“Well,” Soarin’ cut in, “do you mind if we stay here? I’m exhausted!”

Josh told Soarin’ happily, “Sure! This place is definitely big enough for eight.

Eagletone looked around, seeing that the cave was, indeed, spacious enough to comfortably fit eight, or even some more. There was also a hole above the fire inside that appeared to menander outside.

One side of each of the four pegasis’ saddlebags had sleeping gear in it - a bag and a pillow. As they were getting these out, Eagletone remembered an occurrence before they had left Cloudsdale. He had asked why he didn’t have his cutie mark on his saddle bag, to which Spitfire had responded, “Well, I don’t think we have a tailor anywhere close, do we?”

The sun set as they were going to sleep, beginning the time of gloam. Eagle mused about how fitting that word was. It sounded like gloom, which was exactly what the environment was at the moment. “Good night, everypony,” he said sleepily. “Sweet lucid dreams.”

Unfortunately, he himself was a light sleeper, so after everypony else had gone to sleep, we was still awake. He got out of his bag and sat at the edge of the cave, staring at the stars, partly covered by clouds at the moment, and wondering.

How exactly did we get here? If we came here in our dreams, is this just a big dream? I don’t think it is. What exactly is this monster Fluttershy talked about, and how can we defeat it? I hope these humans are our allies. His eyes started drooping. This place really is gloomy, even though it isn’t a swamp, or anything. It’s just so lonely. Eagle’s eyes were fully closed, and he slid down into a sleeping position. Who is the third pony?

***

When they woke, it was day, and it was raining, though not heavily. The other two ponies mentioned by Josh weren’t back yet. Cache had explained that they were wandering, and hopefully getting food and that they should be back sometime that day. By Eagletone’s reckoning, it was Sunday. It was still gloomy.

Spitfire walked up to where Eagle was, which was still at the cave’s mouth. “Well, whadda’ ya’ know? A natural rain. You don’t see that every day, Eagle.”

“Yeah,” he half-mindedly replied. He seemed distracted, not looking at the orange pegasus. His mind was on other things. Namely, the third pony. That thought had reverberated throughout his brain the entire night. He even faintly remembered a dream about it.

The four had decided to wait for the other two ponies to return and see if the other four could help our band, or vice-versa. As such, they had little to do, seeing as they had packed food in their other saddlebag, so they had no need to collect any. (the one was for sleeping gear, if you recall from further up the page.)

As a result of their boredom, of which they seemed to have caught from Cache and Josh like a cold, they decided to talk, asking each other questions.

“So,” began Cache, “You said ‘more humans,’ implying there was others you had met. Who are they?”

“You’re looking at them,” Soarin’ had said, motioning to Eagle and Mitch, the former of which had stayed silent, preferring to focus on the monster that had destroyed Cloudsdale.

Josh and Cache looked at them in surprise - they looked so much like ponies! Then again, if you knew what you were looking for, you could see more human features in their face, less extravagant colors in their eyes and manes.

“I’m Eagletone, and this is Mitch,” he introduced. Mitch nodded. Eagletone commented on his behavior. “He’s usually not like this, but there was sort of a horrible monster that destroyed a major city and probably killed most of its inhabitants, and we need to stop it. So, where are you guys from?”

The other two stared wide-eyed for a moment, then recovered. “It’s kind of weird, but we’re all from the western part of the US. How come you have a pony name and Mitch doesn’t, even though you’re supposedly a human?”

It was Eagle’s turn to widen his eyes. “Whoa! That’s where we’re from, too! Wait a second, does the name Carson ring a bell, Cache?”

“Carson Howe?”

Eagletone simply stared now. He was a happy man- err, pony. Two of his friends were here, and he suspected that he knew Josh as well.

“Wait, Carson, is that you?” asked Josh.

Eagle’s expression became that of a stupid grin. “Of course it is! Cache you already know Mitch, but Josh, this is one of my best friends!”

In his introduction to the other two, he had payed more close attention. “Cache?” he asked, waiting for a confirmation. It came. “Cache!” he yelled, giving him a brohoof. He also walked over and brohoofed Josh, saying, “Nice to meet you, man.”

Eagletone suddenly had an idea. “Guys, who are the two others?”

Josh responded, “Aaron and Jed.”

Eagle jumped into the air and pumped both hooves multiple times. “I knew it! And this is awesome - King Aaronius and his brother Jed are here!”

And they were there, for at that moment, they had returned, laden with much fruit and other foodstuffs. They were of large stature and very muscular build. The blond hair of both was long. Both had an outline of a moose as their mark. Their current expression was similar to that of when the other six had originally met in the same cave.

The longer-haired one inquired, “Josh, why are there ponies way out here, and why are they in our cave?”

Josh had his answer ready. “Those two,” he motioned to Eagle and Mitch, “Are more humans, and are Cache’s friends, and the other two are professional flyers,” he explained.

“So, there’s more of us here?” asked the shorter-haired pony.

Eagletone then responded, “Yeah, and we need to save the world. And by the world I mean Earth and Equestria.” He sat down, then added, “And by the way, if you remember the name, I’m Carson. But I changed my name to Eagletone because that’s a normal pony name.”

“Oh, hey. Fancy that - we’re all from the same place!” the longer-haired one noted.

Cache walked around the two large ponies, saying, “And the little pegasus over there is Mitch, me and Eagletone’s friend. Now that our introductions are over, let’s eat, because I’m starving!”

He helped remove their saddlebags laden with victuals, took something out, and began devouring it. Josh did likewise, then the two brothers. The four pegasi had already ate from their own stocks.

Eagle noticed that it had stopped raining and decided to point it out. Aaron responded. “Great! Now we can finish the train!”

Eagletone and Mitch stopped whatever they were doing. “Say what now?” Mitch said.

Jed replied saying, “Our little ferroequ- ferrah- “

Josh sighed. “Ferroequinearchaeologist.”

“-That. Anyways, there just so happened to be an abandoned train just a little outside of where we are. Trust me, I have no idea how it got there. So, we decided to fix it up, and she’s almost done. It seems as if it was built to be pulled.”

“Fortunately for us,” Aaron added with a grin, “The two of us are strong enough to pull it.”

“Awesome!” Eagle exclaimed.

***

Josh was supervising the work being done on his baby. Train. He had long since given up on using the actual names of the pieces, simply referring to them as ‘this’ or ‘that’. “Okay, now just put that piece riiiiight there. No, not there! Perfect!”

The others were, of course following Josh’s orders, albeit, with difficulty, except for the two Wonderbolts, seeing as they had been using their mouths to pick things up for their whole lives and all the others had recently come here.

Despite the fact that Cache had no formal training (or any training at all,) he still had managed to figure out how to use his horn in some small ways. He had actually figured out how to make an enormous charge at the end of his horn, and they had attached thin pieces of metal to it to work as welding rods. Unfortunately, they had no masks, so he had to do the whole thing with his eyes closed. Eventually, and with a lot of practice, he had figured out how to do it, and by the end of this project, he was able to perform this task quite well. He was currently not doing anything besides looking silly with a thin piece of metal sticking out from his horn. Josh decided to remedy both things - his inactivity and the piece of metal.

“Cache, weld this onto there. See where it broke off?”

“Sure thing,” Cache replied, heading over to do his job.

About half an hour of this whole thing, and Josh suddenly had a different facial expression. He looked shocked. And then he started smiling. That smile turned into a full-on Pinkie Pie smile. “Do you know what this means?” he asked to nopony in particular.

“That I don’t have to wear this silly thing on my horn?” Cache asked to somepony in particular.

“That... and so much more!” Suddenly he ran to the engine, climbing in and looking around like a child in a candy store. “So much more! So many things! We could go anywhere the tracks take us!” He laughed in exuberation, spinning around in circles.

Eagletone said to the rest of the group, “I haven’t seen him this excited since... ever.”

Soarin’ leaned close to Spitfire’s ear and whispered to her.

Spitfire nodded in agreement and spoke to the group. “This track is sure to lead to Equestria’s main railroad, the Trans-Equestrian Railroad. That will lead to Appleoosa. I suggest we get in and start getting there. She and Soarin’ flew into one of the cars on the train. The others followed suit, while the two brothers went up front to pull.

Josh had since settled down enough to get in the car with the others, and they all set off.

“This is going to be one awesome ride,” Mitch said to his friends.

“It sure is,” Eagletone agreed.

***

Spry canyon raised his head to the skies. “Why, Fin? Why is your writing taking so long? Just get the third member already - I mean, I have to sit here, waiting for the Three to-” Suddenly he was cut off to avoid excessive spoilers. “I hate you,” he said.

Train Rides are Boring

Chapter 5

Train Rides are Boring

“This is one boring ride,” Mitch said to his friends.

“It sure is,” Eagletone agreed.

Josh’s expression was that of boredom, but his words were that of hypocrisy. “Come on guys, it’s not that bad!” He shrunk down a bit as everypony in the cart gave him a flat look.

Spitfire had been flapping around worriedly in the car. “I never liked trains. No offense, Josh. It’s just that a pegasus wasn’t made for this. I feel claustrophobic here. There’s no room to fly!”

Soarin’ had seemed on edge a while after he had gotten on the train as well, and could only agree.

Cache had been asleep, practically for the entire trip. He was still so. Eagletone commented on this saying, “I guess he doesn’t get much sleep back on Earth.”

“Actually,” replied Josh, “He took most of the night watch for all of the nights.” Several eyebrows raised in surprise. “He deserves a rest.” The other ponies had to agree.

Eagletone cracked a smile. “He reminds me a bit of a certain purple pony I know of,” he said with a touch of humor. The bronies in the car also smiled at that.

They had been travelling on the train for a number of hours with Aaron’s and Jed’s relentless pulling hardly even winding the enormous war ponies. Eagletone, Mitch, Josh, Cache and the two Wonderbolts, Soarin’ and Spitfire were on the train. They had removed the majority of the cars to lighten the load - there was no use in carrying useless weight. Seeing as the group of four pegasi were on the train, it would seem that they had joined with the other group of four, though nopony had officially said so.

Hours passed by with little to do in the traincar. They were often reduced to looking out the window and watching the terrain. It had changed considerably, from fir-filled forest to desolate desert. The tracks went on for miles - it was a good thing that they had packed large amounts of food and water rations before leaving. Little could be seen besides hard, sun-baked dirt, a mesa here or there, and a good amount of cacti. Even less could be seen since the sun was setting and it was getting dark.

That was one thing, Eagletone reflected, that he loved about being out here in Equestria’s wilderness - he was practically alone to enjoy nature at its purest. He had always loved nature, though he could never remember the various names of plants and animals. He mostly enjoyed looking on. The sky above was often equally impressive, with indescribably complex cloud structures, the unimaginably vast reaches of space, and the breathtakingly beautiful sunsets.

Despite all this, a small amount of questions resonated in his head, seeming to bounce around and repeat into his mind’s ear. How are we going to defeat this monster? How long will it take to get to Appleoosa? Who is the third? As Eagle thought these, he drooped off into sleep.

***

He woke up in a rather awkward position, leaning against a sleeping Spitfire, and her against him, as before he had gone to sleep, Spitfire had settled down on the bench he and and Mitch were sitting at. The time it took him to register this was the time it took for her to wake up.

“Wuagh!” The two said in unision as they jumped a bit apart.

Eagletone was blushing through his red coat. Both were looking away, embarrassed. A moment passed and they out of the bench. Eagle noticed that the train was not moving and that the car was vacant with the exception of him and Spitfire. It was morning.

“So... Should we see what everypony’s doing outside?” Eagletone asked, standing awkwardly.

“Yeah,” responded Spitfire, looking away.

The two trotted onto the ground to be met with snickers. Of course they had seen the two like they had been. And they had to rub it in their faces just a little bit.

“Sorry man,” Mitch said to Eagle. “It was just too funny to pass up!” Everypony was laughing now, even Eagletone and Spitfire.

“So you two,” Eagle said to Aaron and Jed, “stopped pulling? It must be pretty darn heavy.”

“We rested for the night,” Aaron replied with a powerful voice. “Pulling a train is hard work, you know.”

“Ha, I could only imagine!” said Eagle with his eyes in the air. Suddenly, his stomach growled - to everypony’s amusement. “Oh yeah. About breakfast...” he started expectantly.

“Just get what you need from the food car,” Josh jerked his head, pointing.

He, Mitch, Cache, Soarin’ and Spitfire all went over to eat, the other three having already done so.

“A nice day to not be out here,” Soarin’ commented sarcastically. Cache agreed between bites.

“All the more reason to finish quickly,” he said, stopping conversation and replacing it with food, which was gladly taken by the others.

They finished their bland but filling meal of whatever horses eat - Eagle didn’t really care, as long as he stayed alive. Or if it was bacon. He missed being able to eat bacon. Six went inside the train while Aaron and Jed stayed to pull. They didn’t mind, such was their mindset.

As the train started moving, Eagletone started watching, mesmerized by the passing of the terrain, which soon became a bit of a blur. All the ponies settled in.

“So,” began Mitch as he layed back, “Humans in Equestria. Pretty cliché if you ask me.”

“Totally,” Eagletone smirked. The joke had gone over the other ponies’ heads, as they were unacquainted with fanfiction. “And talk about way of travel, I mean, through a wormhole in our dreams? So overused!”

Josh cut in at this moment. “Wait a second, wormhole? Me, Jed and Aaron found a portal up at camp and came in through there, although I’m not sure about Cache.”

“A portal?” asked Cache, seeming to go along with the ‘dream wormhole’ mode of transportation.

“Well, that’s weird,” Mitch commented.

Spitfire also came into the conversation. “Okay, so there’s two ways to get to Equestria?”

“I guess so,” Cache replied.

Soarin’ cradled his skull. “Ugh, my head...”

***

“... Which is really stupid, because you’d think he would have ducked!” Eagletone’s punchline was met with a confused moment of definitely-not-laughing, followed by uproarious laughter. They had fallen into silence for a while, but lacked any way to entertain themselves. Any way that is, except for themselves. And so they did various things as a group to keep from terminal boredom, and telling jokes just so happened to be one of them. I feel sorry for Aaron and Jed, Eagletone had thought as he told his masterpiece.

But so was their role, it seemed. They didn’t mind. And so, the six ponies spent another day along the track to Appleoosa, slightly less bored than the last, and definitely eager for the next and final day of their journey.

On the thought of their journey, Eagle had to point something out to the pony who had been leading the four pegasi, Soarin’. “Hey, Soarin’?”

“Yeah?” he asked.

“According to an official map of Equestria I’ve seen, the only place we could have been that had forest, train tracks and caves was way northwest. In other words, the opposite direction of Appleoosa.”

“Oh. Well to tell you the truth,” Sorain’ answered, embarrased, “ I have no idea why Spitfire chose me to pick a direction, I just might have the worst sense of it in the history of pegasi.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Eagle nodded, satisfied.

He suddenly realised how dark it was getting - Jed and Aaron had been pulling almost all day, only stopping for food and to refill on water. He also realized how tired he was getting from being lazy and sitting around.

Once again, he looked out the window to behold the glorious sunset. He remembered something about why the reason the sunset was red instead of blue was because the wavelengths that the eyes saw during the sunset were longer than during the day. The usual thoughts crept into his mind, taking it over. Why are train rides so boring? What’s up with this ‘two ways to Equestria’ thing? How will the monster be defeated? Who and what is the monster? Who is the third? Always, his train of thought ended at that question, bouncing around his head, repeating endlessly. He had no answer, and he needed one. As he was puzzling this, once again he drooped into sleep’s wispy arms.

Unbeknownst to him, if Cache hadn’t had to get a drink in the middle of the night, then in the morning, Eagle would have found himself close to Spitfire again, due to her tendency to move in her sleep. Except this time, it wasn’t the sides of their heads that were touching. Fortunately, for the two’s prides, Cache was merciful, moving them away with his magic and telling nopony of the event.

***

Eagletone was awoken by a shout to wake up. He obliged, unwilling to endure anything more extreme. Opening his eyes, he saw Jed him. Eagle assumed that it was that pony’s voice who had made the noise.

He also heard the groans of an unwilling awakening around him. It seemed that he was not the only pony who had slept in.

Eagle trotted out with Jed, Soarin’ and Spitfire, the others following more slowly and zombie-like. He ate his breakfast of whatever; Cache, Mitch and Josh coming along a little less than a minute later. They conversed, woke up more thoroughly, and once again assumed their appropriate positions: Aaron and Jed pulling and all the others in the passenger cart.

One thing the brothers had been asked was how they stood pulling the train for so long without getting tired or bored. Aaron had replied happily that they had their ways. Another question they had been asked was how long until they reached Appleoosa. The answer, though, came from Spitfire - they were only a few hours off, from what she could tell.

There was a considerably more jovial atmosphere in the train car today - they were finally going to get to Appleoosa!

Chatting, along with all the other things they did to keep from boredom were used. Mitch was surprised that there weren’t more trains. The mood suddenly grew somber as Eagle realized and explained something - there was only one track in Equestria, as far as he could tell, and it ran right through Canterlot, and Ponyville. They hadn’t noticed any buildings, or any sign of habitation, save the track itself.

“Oh. That’s not good,” said Mitch, his usual smile gone. The others agreed. This was definitely not good. They were suddenly a little less eager to see what was in store for them in Appleoosa.

There was one good thing, though - Appleoosa was the most decentralized of any pony civilization - there was a chance that the monster hadn’t gotten to them yet. They could only hope for the best as they waited to arrive.

Josh decided to lighten the mood. “So Eagle, Spitfire,” he called their attention. “You a couple now, or what?” His attempt didn’t work. At all. The expression of the arc blue earth pony drooped.

Little besides time could lighten the mood at all; it stayed somber for a number of hours. Eagle returned to his usual spot by the window, watching the endless desert go by, focusing on one crack, shrub, cactus, or sand dune at a time, until it passed from the view of the aperture.

It was noon when he saw a familiar mountain pass. This pass was the one next to Appleoosa! He remembered because the buffalo had thundered down here to attack the town in the show, only, this was the other side. In fact, he even saw a familiar sign, a little dented from an impact some time ago.

Eagle smirked and pointed it out to Mitch. He smiled, then showed it to Spitfire, saying, “Hey, you see that sign? Rainbow Dash crashed into it.” Spitfire also grinned.

They passed the sign. Eagle’s smirk turned into a beam of happiness - they were only a few hours from their destination! “YES!” he suddenly yelled. “We’re only a few hours away, now!”

Now everypony was smiling. “I’ve gotta’ admit, even I’m a little sick of riding on a train,” Josh said, relieved.

Their joy soon turned into apprehension as they awaited their arrival. “I just hope the Appleoosans are okay,” Cache said, worried.

The small rest of the trip was fairly uneventful; they sighted Appleoosa a small time before they arrived, and they saw that it was actually intact. In fact, there seemed to be more houses than before - a good thing, to be sure.

Half an hour after the sighting of the town, they finally arrived. Mitch seemed especially excited as they came to a stop, exclaiming, “YES. YEEEEESSSS. SSSSSSS.”

Now that they were closer, Eagle could see the ponies gathered around the boarding station confused. He picked out a certain number of familiar faces, not from Appleoosa. Some of these were ponies from Ponyville, Canterlot, even Derpy was present - he smiled at this. There also appeared to be some ponies who were unfamiliar, though they looked unfamiliar with life in the Wild West. Or, in the case of Equestria, the Savage South.

All had the same look on their face; one that clearly said that trains were not expected in the least. Perhaps they had all ended up like this one, he mused.

As they all stepped out, some took note of Soarin’ and Spitfire, who had exited onto the boarding place first. Then they noticed four stallions who looked a bit more like they were watching a good movie than at a train station.

One, Twilight Sparkle, actually (for the rest of the Mane Six was there at Appleoosa, it seemed,) spoke up. “I know you two are Wonderbolts,” she said, obviously referring to the two Wonderbolts, “but who are you six?”

Eagletone was quick to reply. “We,” he paused for dramatic effect, “are men.” There was a slight collective gasp. Eagle lowered his tone. “And we’re going to show everypony how a man and his friends help save Equestria.” His small speech was met with whispering, chatting, and all-around skepticism.

***

All except for one pony, a stallion who looked to be a bit older, though built strong. He spoke with a soft, low, and just barely gravelly voice. “Ah, I didn’t think that I would have previously known one of the Three Heros of Balance, Carson.”

Eagle’s eyes widened in surprise. “Rob? So that’s where you disappeared to months ago! We even held a search party! That fiasco almost went national!”

“It’s Spry Canyon, now. For the same reasons that you are Eagletone.”

“Well,” Eagle said, walking up to him and giving him a brofist, “It’s great to have another friend. I’ve got a lot of questions, old man.”

Spry’s answer was quick. “Well, I’ve got a lot of answers. Let’s see if they match up.”

End of Chapter Five

No More Stalling (A.K.A. The Third Pony)

Chapter 6

No More Stalling (A.K.A. The Third Pony)

Immediately continued from Chapter Five

“...Let’s see if they match up.” Spry walked out of the crowd with Eagletone, the others of the team following. As they were walking, Spitfire caught Eagle’s eye and they looked back awkwardly. Once they got to Spry’s house - a quaint place without excessive furnishing along one of the few lanes that made up Appleoosa - Eagle started unloading questions onto him.

“First and foremost, how in the blazes did we get here? Apparently, there’s a portal somewhere up at Camp, but there’s also a portal in our dreams. I don’t get it. Also, what is this monster that we need to defeat, exactly. How did you recognize me, even though you’ve never seen me like this before, and how do you know why I changed my name? How long have you been here? How are we going to defeat the monster, and finally and most importantly as you seem to know who the Three are, who is the third?!”

There was a silence in the house as Spry processed all of the questions. When he finished, he talked. “Most of my answers are only meant for the ears of the Three. It is a fortunate thing that they all are standing before me.” There was a look of startled surprise on the faces of the ponies. Eagletone and Mitchell. You already know that you are two of the three. As you all know, though, there is one more. Cache, you are the Third pony of legend.”

“Me?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t make a mistake like that, now would I? In fact, that brings me to another of your questions. As to how long I’ve been here, you may find record referring to me hundreds of years ago, or even across the ages. In my time, I’ve been here for only a few years.”

Mitch was flabbergasted. “So you’re a time traveller? But I thought that the most advanced time travel by ponies could only allow you to go for a small amount of time, and even then, you could only cast the spell once!”

Even the other ponies were rather astonished, especially the two real ponies. “Time travel is possible...?” Spitfire asked, rather dazed.

Spry gave a rather dark look. “Indeed, Starswirl the Bearded made that spell, and many others. One of these other spells was not meant to be used by any pony; not even the Royal Sisters. That was the last spell he created - the ability to permanently travel through time multiple times with a group of ponies as big as a unicorn’s power could handle - a breakthrough even bigger than his previous time travel spell,” he said, reminiscing in some nostalgic time.

Already wide eyes were now accompanied by slack jaws.

“Starswirl, of course, was wise enough not to share this information to any pony besides the Alicorns themselves, who told him that a spell like this was dangerous for everypony, to which he completely agreed. Unfortunately for him, he was unwise enough to use the spell himself, with a group of two of his closest consorts. One of them was an Earth pony.”

Eagletone could see where this was going.

“That was the day that Starswirl the Bearded’s official death was marked. According to my calculations,” he said, for he was a math teacher on Earth, “He was alive for an additional two years, relatively. In the end, time travel was the downfall of two ponies: one unicorn, one pegasus. Oh, they died spectacularly,make no doubt about that,” he said reassuringly, “He saved the lives of many by dealing with the time stream, but perhaps it could have turned out equally well had he never succumbed to the urge to adventure in time.”

As he finished his sad tale of the true death of Starswirl the Bearded, he looked on the pouch that was around his neck. Eagle guessed that he had received it from Starswirl, and that whatever was in there, or maybe even the pouch itself, were extremely valuable. He could tell something else, as well - something that Cache also seemed to realized.

“You’re holding back,” Cache concluded, finally.

Spry Canyon sighed, and replied, “Yes, I am. I wish I wasn’t, but much of the story - our adventures and this little pouch in particular - have to do with the Three Elements of Balance.”

“Tired?” Spitfire asked simply.

“Exhausted,” Spry answered. “Exhausted from keeping secrets. Exhausted from running away. I’m ready to hit the hay and wake up ready to start fighting!”

His short speech was inspiring, and the ponies agreed by cheering.

“But seriously,” he called, interrupting their cry, “I’m tired. I need to get some sleep and wake up early. I’m not exactly young anymore!” He was laughing as he dismissed them. “Go talk to Braeburn for some lodging. I trust you know who he is?”

“Of course, Rob!”

“It’s Spry, Eagletone!”

“You don’t seem very spry to me!” he called as he flew out the door.

Spry smiled as the last pony walked out. “Cache. Tell the other two to come to my house early tomorrow.”

“Sure thing,” Cache said.

Spry walked slowly to his bedroom. his shoulder was killing him at the moment. He popped it. Ahhh, that’s better! He layed down on his bed, excited to see what tomorrow would bring. Certainly a lot of questions, a lot of new things, and a lot of him having to explain everything. Perhaps his seership was doing him more harm than good, forcing him to run his mouth. Oh, he would have to explain that too. For the first time in a while, Spry Canyon fell asleep at a reasonable time without staying awake at ridiculous hours of the night.

***

The sun was setting as the team of six humans and two ponies were trying to find Braeburn. Spitfire accidentally caught Eagle’s eye again and they both looked away, then after a slight hesitation, looked back only to look away again because the other was doing the same. Timing was merciful that night though, as the found Braeburn immediately afterwards.

He seemed nearly as enthusiastic as he was in the episode Over a Barrel, but Eagle could tell that some of his enthusiasm was a bit forced; understandable in these circumstances as possibly the last settlement standing in all of Equestria. “Well, howdy! What can Ah do ya’fer, seein’ as you eight’re new ‘round these here parts?”

Aaron was the one to answer in his seemingly regal voice. “Spry Canyon sent us to find you. He said you could provide us lodging.”

Braeburn just seemed to notice the large red pony and his similarly-featured brother. “Hoa, you two sure are mahghty big. Y’look even larger’n m’cuzin Big Macintosh!” for indeed they were. “Anyways, yer lookin’ fer a place to bed, are ya’? Y’all can head on over t’the Salt Block over yonder,” he said with a gesture of the hoof in the direction of their watering hole.

“Thanks, Braeburn!” Said Josh, thoroughly tired - Ironically, it was the two brothers who had been doing all the work that day, and a couple of days before and they seemed limber and ready to pull for another week without sleep.

“Not a problem, pardners!” he smiled, leaving.

The group of eight walked in the road until they came to their destination, the Salt Block. It looked no different than in the show, with its classic saloon-style double-doors. As they approached, the tall barkeeper came out the door. Like in the episode he was in, he was rather fancily dressed and would be slightly intimidating to any smaller pony. “Howdy! Welcome to the Salt Block, the finest waterin’ hole around!” He laughed at his own joke - it was the only watering hole around. “What’re a few’a you youngsters doin’ round here?”

“We were hoping to find lodging, if you were able to supply,” Jed replied in a similar voice to Aaron’s.

Oddly, Jed had a similar effect on the barkeep as Aaron did on Braeburn - they seemed to notice the two little until they talked. “Hoa, you two sure are-”

“We know,” they said together.

The tall barkeeper regained his composure and started talking again. “Well, we have some rooms, but like ev’ri’thing in this here saloon, it’ll run ya’ some bits, no matter who y’are,” he said, talking business now.

“Well then,” said Spitfire grinning, “It’s a good thing I have some bits to run, isn’t it?”

The barkeeper’s eyes seemed to grow as big as his legs as he saw a sample of the money Spitfire was carrying for circumstances that required it.

“Well, that sure is quite the sum y’got there! I’ll tell’ya what: Ah’m an honorable stallion - Ah don’t go and charge higher prices to those with more money. A hundred n’twenty bits for the lota’ya ta’ room.”

Spitfire and Soarin’ nodded - a hundred and twenty bits was more than reasonable for rooms enough for eight. The humans had no idea how much a bit was worth, though, so they just tried to go along.

After money had been exchanged, the barkeeper happily let the group in, showing them to their rooms. As they were walking through the building, they saw more than a few ponies with a block of salt instead of a hard drink. Most of them weren’t even Appleoosan, and many of those looked downtrodden, trying to dry up their sorrows with Sodium Chloride. A good number of others were completely unconscious, though from salt or lack of sleep, Eagle couldn’t tell.

Once everypony was in their room (there were two to each) they promptly either bathed and went to bed, or simply slept immediately, to wash in the morning. For the first time in a number of days, Eagletone (and all the others) went to sleep on something soft. It was rather nice.

Everypony was tired, except for Jed and Aaron, but Eagle could not get to sleep for a while. He was too excited about what tomorrow’s answers would bring. Cache also could not sleep, excited about the fact that he was the Third Pony, and all were both looking forward to and dreading what would happen.

***

Dawn of the Eighth Day

X Hours Remaining

***

Eagletone awoke early (a rarity for him) and went to have breakfast, remembering that he was in one of the saloon rooms. He thought it odd that there should be hotel rooms in a bar, but he didn’t complain. Perhaps it was sort of like in Lord of the Rings, where there were places to bed in the taverns. He realized that either everypony had woken up very early; which he found unlikely, or he had woken up before anypony else in his small band. As he walked down to the dining area, the only ponies he saw there were two who were unconscious, and one who was slowly circulating a small block of salt around in his mouth. This pony ignored Eagletone as he sat down.

“Hey,” Eagle said to this pony.

He still ignored Eagle.

He looked back to the bartender and ordered the least fermented cider they had, along with a lot of oats.

“Just plain oats? Nothin’ hard or peppy to drink? Not even any salt?” he asked incredulously.

Eagle grinned the slightest bit and replied, “My tastes are a little more than strange.”

The bartender shrugged and went about his business.

“Wimp,” said the stallion sitting next to Eagle without looking at him.

Eagletone, on the other hand glanced over. He had a look of disapproval as he realized who he was from a fanfiction he had read - large, strong, blond, an apple for a cutie mark, of course, though no western-style hat, strangely enough. “You call me a wimp when you leave your own family for... who knows why,” he replied, casually accusing.

The opposing pony became defensive. “Whadda’ you know ‘bout that? It doesn’t concern ya’, boy.” he said, anger starting to rise, though volume still kept low.

“You’re nothing but a disappointment; I don’t know why you’re in here, of all places, Bad Apple,” Eagletone said using the stallions nickname used by his boyhood friends, further aggravating him. “Eeyup. ‘Bad to the core,’ as they used to say. Of course they always loved that about you, didn’t they? You led’em astray. They thought you’d settled down when you had three foals.” he laughed scathingly. “I reckon they were wrong. Could never stay in one place for too long, could’ya, Apple Pie?”

The adjacent stallion could hardly keep his fury contained, trying to hold it in as he said through clenched teeth, “A’ve changed. That’s the past, this is the present.”

Eagle shook his head. “You’re not even worth talking to, Apple Pie, father of Big Macintosh, Applejack, and Applebloom. You call me weak, but you’re truly the weak one. Strength lies not in the body, but in the mind, because if you live your life too freely, you’ll lose all that matters all too soon.” With that he finished, turning back and proceeding to ignore any protests by the errant father.

When his food came, he ate, grateful for the sustenance he needed in order not to die from starvation.

Eventually, Apple Pie stormed off. At that moment, Spitfire walked down, probably for the same reason as Eagle. As she walked down the stairs, she saw him quickly open the door, somewhat stomp out, and slam the door behind him. “What’s eating him?” she asked.

“We had a rather personal argument,” he said casually. “I won.” At that moment, he took a look at the almost-flame-colored pegasus, and immediately looked back to his food, laughing.

“That bad, huh?” she asked almost despairingly.

Eagle had to fit in his quip between his fit of giggles. “Let’s just say that I’d rather sleep on the cave floor again than have that bad of terminal bedhead.”

Spitfire walked down the steps confused.

She stayed confused for a moment longer, because Eagletone had to fight his laughing hard. “...Terminal for... everypony else, that is! Ahahahaha!” He was literally crying at this point.

Every conscious pony in the room was experiencing some degree of humor at the moment. Then again, ‘every conscious pony in the room’ consisted of Eagletone, Spitfire, and the bartender.

“Of course, that isn’t to say you’re not still pretty,” Eagle added, thankful that he was already red to begin with. Man, there’s a lot of red ponies with blond hair, he thought.

Spitfire, on the other hand, was not so lucky; her blush showing through. “Thanks.”

The tall bartender chose that time to take Spitfire’s order. “Whad’ll it be for you, ma’am? Something less strange than plain oats and nothin’ hard to drink, I should hope,” he said with a rather accusing look at Eagle, who shrugged surreptitiously. Spitfire gave him a look that almost had a caption that said, “SRSLY?” on it. Which only made him laugh again.

Spitfire looked at the menu, then saw something that fit her fancy. “I’d like to try this platter of lilly-filled caramel apples.”

Eagle choked on his cider. “You have caramel apples? Why do I not know this?!” he shouted to nopony in particular.

“Well sir, no offense, but actually looking at the menu might help just a bit,” replied the bartender in a confidential whisper.

“Oh yeah. That might help,” Eagletone said, now staring off into space as if he’d just had an epiphany. “Well, could I have some of that, too? Plain caramel apples?” he added innocently.

The bartender was now focused on cleaning a glass with a rag. “It’s her money, far as I know,” he told Eagle.

He gave a look to spitfire to rival Apple Bloom’s. She tried to look away, but the pleading gaze seemed to hold her in its grasp. “Well,” she said, trying to fight it, “... Okay! You can have your dumb apples!”

Eagle pumped his hoof in exuberance. “By the way, where’s everypony else?” he added, his tone casual.

Spitfire was equally casual. “Well, Aaron and Jed got up before dawn.” Typical. “I’m not sure where they went to. Everypony else besides us are either asleep or comatose, it seems,” she joked.

At that moment, their food arrived. The second time that morning for Eagletone. Despite that, he ate quickly, invigorated by the sugar content of the caramel apples. Spitfire on the other hand, ate more delicately, savoring the flavor of each sweet bite.

Needless to say, Eagle finished first, leaving him nothing to concentrate on except for the mare next to him. “So...” he started awkwardly, “Nice weather we’re having...”

“I suppose it doesn’t change all that much out there, save for the occasional flash flood,” she replied.

Eagle decided to get a little less lame. “I suppose this ‘Monster’ thing has affected us all in some way or another.”

Spitfire tried to mare it out, to stay strong, but that struck a chord. She almost started crying. “Yeah, I guess it has.”

Eagle knew he had just done something something forbidden by some unwritten book of how guys should act around girls and all his instincts were telling him to switch the subject, but he knew he had to press on. He could help her with whatever was the matter with her. With some hesitation present in his voice, he continued, “I know it’s affected me; I’m gone from my entire universe because of it. Just to fight it. But you know what, that doesn’t matter. What matters to me right now is what’s wrong with you.”

Spitfire looked at Eagle through somewhat teary eyes, trying to fight her emotions. Her voice came out sorrowfully. “The thought of those endless ponies. That endless line of lives lost. Not just in Cloudsdale, but everywhere. I’m lucky to have survived. I don’t really care about what Wonderbolts show this put off, what race, or anything personal. I feel guilty; guilty that I’m alive just because of pure luck. Guilty that somepony else could be alive instead of me, but they’re not. It’s me.”

Eagletone knew that this was perfect. He could make his master stroke, solve all of her problems. Now if only he knew what the crap to say. As a result, when he tried to respond, it came in chunks, pausing for a while before figuring out what his mind was thinking. “Spitfire... It’s not just pure luck. Nothing is coincidence, you should know that... There’s no reason to be guilty, because there are other ponies who survived. Ponies that escaped... And as far as I know, these ‘Three Bearers of the Elements of Balance’ that I’m apparently a part of are going to fix that.” Yes. It was perfect. Or, at least, he was pretty sure of it.

Spitfire had dropped a few tears by this point. Eagle decided to be even more bold - he put a comforting arm around her. “Thanks,” she said.

Just one thing to top it off, he thought. And thought for a moment longer. Perfect. “And just know that, no matter what, I’ll be here.”

“Yeah,” Spitfire said, turning the arm around her into an embrace.

There was only one thing going through Eagletone’s mind. AAAAAWWWWW YEEEAAAAAH!

They continued for a short while until it became slightly awkward, then Eagle had to covertly point that out. “Ah... You can go back to being Normal Spitfire now,” he whispered.

The broke out of the embrace. “Oh. Yeah.” After that brief moment, she was back to being normal, awesome, leaderly Spitfire.

Eagletone decided to leave the bar to go for a short flight - something he would have rarely done at home, even if he had wings. He opened the wooden door and stepped out, only to be immediately bombarded by light.

“AAAARRGH! NATURAL LIIIIIIIIGHT!” he shouted in a low, nasally voice, covering his face with his hoof. After his usual ritual, he took off, a short contrail of flames following his phoenix feather. He had grown a habit of concentrating on the warmth from that contrail, since it was strangely comforting. As he was doing this, he suddenly noticed more than saw something out in the distance, thankfully northward of the eastern sun. Somehow he knew it was a phoenix, and not just a phoenix, but Philomena. And then he felt a comfortable burning in his feather, which told him that the feather was the source of his knowledge. He decided to fly towards her, to meet her in the air. He felt unusually clumsy this morning, and so ended up walking by the time he actually came to the bird. “I suppose you’re not just here to say hello, are you, Philomena?” he asked, half-guessing the firebird’s intents.

To his surprise, the bird produced a third feather, much like his own. Then he remembered - Cache never met Philomena. He didn’t have a feather. And a phoenix feather would be very useful for a human who was already somewhat knowledgeable in the arcane arts.

His eyes widened in revelation with a quiet “Aahh,” then he was back to business-mode, feeling somewhat nostalgic at him following the bird, this time to a civilization that was not ruined.

He laughed - that day seemed so long ago, despite it being only eight sunrises ago.

Eagle’s recreational flight, he realized, had been cut short, replaced by more important things. He flew through the door with the large, flaming bird much to the surprise of every conscious pony there, the number of which had increased by one, due to one of the formerly unconscious stallions having woken up. He ran up the stairs, up to the living quarters, and pounded on Cache’s door, much to the dismay of everypony who was currently sleeping and was awoken by his pounding.

“Wake up, Cache! I’ve got a present and it’s not violence!” he called through the door. Fortunately, ponies had little need of locks, so he just opened the door (which had been cleverly designed for the use of ponies) and walked in, followed by Philomena.

Cache had just gotten out of bed in response to Eagle’s yelling, and was immediately awake at the sight of fire in his room. “FIRE! He called in fear before realizing that it was not spreading. Or even very hot.

“Don’t worry silly, it’s just a phoenix,” Eagletone said calmingly.

“A phoenix?!” Cache exclaimed.

“Phoenixes are always good guys; you know that Cache!”

That seemed to calm him down a bit. Enough to give him his feather, at least. He wasn’t really sure where to put it, but he eventually settled on the opposite ear Eagle had put his on.

“I should explain something. This feather doesn’t just look cool, even though it definitely does that too, it protects you from a lot of physical harm, and improves your unicorn abilities, along with some other things,” he said energetically.

“Oh, cool. Thanks,” Cache said with a grateful smile, as he had finally calmed down enough to think rationally.

The feather definitely looked cool, the flame-colors contrasting nicely with his turquoise coat and dark blond hair. As the ends of Eagle’s and Mitch’s wings were tipped with flames that seemed to dance if one stared, so was Cache’s horn. He took a look in a mirror and proclaimed, “I... look awesome.” And indeed he did. “Oh, and Eagletone!”

“Yeah?”

“Before I forget, Spry said to meet him at his house again today. Just the three this time.”

Eagle nodded and then left to try and get some flying in before Mitch woke up and finished eating. “Oh, by the way Cache, look at the menu before you order.”

Cache laughed to himself.

End of Chapter Six

The Past (... and Present... and Future...) of Spry Canyon pt. 1

Chapter 7

The Past (...and Present...and Future...) of Spry Canyon pt.1

Mitch must have been the comatose pony Spitfire had been talking about, because when Eagle was back from his flight, which had been abnormally clumsy for some reason, Mitch was still asleep. As such, Eagle decided, grinning slyly, to wake him up. He slunk into the room, next to his face and proceeded to be as annoying as possible.

“Mitch! Mitch! Mitch! Mitch! Mitchell! Mitchell! Mitchell! Mitchell! Ponies!-”

At the mention of the last word, Mitch immediately bolted upright, yelling some incomprehensible word. Fortunately fEagle was to the side of, and not over his friend. He immediately gained awareness of his surroundings (something rare for him, or anypony, really) and started talking to Eagle.

“Eagle! I’ve got it!” he exclaimed.

“Got what?” Eagle exclaimed back!

“My pony name!”

Eagletone immediately put his hooves to his cheeks in joy.

“It’s Bass Clef!”

“Awesome! Now, eat breakfast fast, because we have to be at Spry’s as soon as possible!”

“Okay!”

After that short exchange, Bass Clef got up, ran down to the dining area of the saloon and ate. Eagletone and Cache had nothing to do, so they decided to simply hang around and talk. Josh seemed to have woken up earlier, and had just finished when they came down to eat, so he was there too; everypony else was out and about. Four of the twelve barstools were occupied now.

“So,” A grinning Eagletone began, “You know what you said about me and Spitfire, Josh?”

“...Yeah, what about it?” he inquired, the tone in his voice making it clear he was oblivious.

Eagle raised one eyebrow in a way that told him to think.

And then he got it. “...Seriously?”

“Hey, if the horseshoe fits.”

The other two former guys at the barstool didn’t even get what they were talking about, having forgot all about a certain incident.

“Remember, on the train?” he hinted to them.

Cache suddenly burst out laughing for reasons other than what Eagle was thinking - reasons only he knew. “So you two are a couple now, are you?”

Eagle smiled - they finally got it! “I was asked that once before, but I’m gonna’ say ‘heck, yes!’ this time.”

Bass Clef shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat, man. Anyways, I’m done eating so do you wanna’ head on over to Spry’s?”

“Sure,” Cache agreed. All four ponies got up, since there was no longer anything for Josh to do where they were.

“I think I’ll go to the train station, see if I can do anything there.”

And with that, they went their separate ways. Eagletone, Bass Clef, and Cache opened the door and walked out into the desert heat and a Western setting, and walked down the dirt road to the house of Spry Canyon at the far end of the small town, wooden buildings, some painted, all along the way.

It was a lot hotter now that it was no longer morning, something that Cache pointed out. The other two agreed on this, especially Eagletone, who had been out before it had gotten too hot. This made them all the more eager to get into the cool of Spry’s house, so they quickened their pace and didn’t talk with anypony on the way, despite what their inner-bronies told them to do.

***

Spry Canyon was sitting in his room, which at the moment was rather dark since he didn’t want the heat of a candle adding to that of the day. Not to mention he had grown used to being in a room that was just light enough to read in. He sighed, remembering old times of long ago. Very long ago. That was how he passed the time now, remembering those days of adventure and mayhem so that he might never forget some of his best - and worst - experiences.

As he sat there, reflecting like he so often did, there came a rare knock at his door. He had been expecting this, of course, and went to greet the True Three Bearers of the Elements of Balance. He opened the door and was not disappointed by his Sight, though his eyes were rather blinded by the sudden almost-noonday sun. “Eagletone, Cache, Mitch! Come in, please,” he said, welcoming them into his house with a gesture of the hoof.

Mitch was eager to share the news of his name with the older former-human, who responded positively. “Ah, so you finally got yourself a name that makes sense, did you, Bass Cleff?”

He nodded eagerly.

“Well, that’s all well and good, but you all three know why you’re here,” Spry said, sobering the company. “To learn. To learn about everything that is important right now. To learn about the Elements of Balance, what they are and why they are.” Eagle nodded and sat down comfortably, the other two following suit. Spry continued, “To learn about Oblivion. Who it is, and why it exists.” He was met with confused faces on this one, which he had expected. He decided to start with one thing first.

“So, you know that you three are the Three of legend, but you don’t know what that means. I’ve said that you’re the ‘Bearers of the Elements of Balance,’ but you don’t know what that means either. You may have guessed already, but these are one and the same.”

The three nodded, understanding.

“The Elements of Balance are like the Elements of Harmony, something I’m sure you all know of.” He was met with knowing grins. “They are indeed very similar, even having come into existance at the same time, along with the Elements of Creation which no longer exist, having been consumed in the Dawn of Ponies as we know it.

“But,” he continued, “They are also inherently different in a number of ways. For one, you may have noticed that nopony has ever even heard of them, and for a good reason. They exist only for one purpose and one purpose only: to destroy one entity that never should have existed in the first place. Or in the case of the time they were created, should never exist.

“There is also one more, completely integral difference: The Elements of Harmony cannot take a life. They can purge something or someone of evil, like with Nightmare Moon, but if that thing or person was evil to begin with, it can only seal it until the bearers change, something that happened with Discord. In a way, the Balance Elements are sort of a step up in both ability and danger in the wrong hands, for they can do many things, but the most important thing about them is that they can take a life. They were made to kill evil.”

The Three were dumbstruck.

“Oblivion is this ‘Monster’ you speak of. It attacks entire civilizations, and when it does, they literally cease to exist. Yes, I know the laws of conservation of matter and energy state that this is impossible, but you must remember that Oblivion himself is impossible. I thought that the only way to stop him was to seal him back into his own dimension, but I must have been proven wrong by the Royal Sisters,” he said, the last part mostly to himself. “They must have found a way to halt his destruction without sealing him, which takes an irreplaceable source. Despite this, I assure you that it is only temporary. We have a limited amount of time before the Princesses never existed, either.”

Everypony in the room looked thoughtful after this portion of news.

Spry Canyon sighed. “Now that you know the basics, I suppose I should tell you my story It has everything you need to know to help you in exact detail. Cache. Allow me to place my hoof on your shoulder and your two friends’ on the other.”

All three were rather confused, but complied, meeting immediate results. All their normal thoughts were cleared away, replaced by those of Spry Canyon. His voice no longer sounded there, but distant. Distant and very echo-ey.

***

“I told you already of a small portion of my travels with Starswirl the Bearded. I shall tell you all that you need to know, now.”

They seemed to be flying through a thick fog in a dark, endless place, but as he finished talking, everything cleared somewhat, ending up in a blurry rendition of a wide-built, strong man walking through a red desert filled with beautiful crimson sandstone mountains, mesas, and plateaus.

As he was walking, he was admiring the harsh beauty of his natural surroundings. Of course there was little around him that was not natural. He was hiking alone, on a well used trail in a National Park. Suddenly, the strangest thing happened - a light blue, glowing portal opened up right under him with a tenor rumble. Rob had no chance to respond to this, and immediately fell in. The vision suddenly became first person.

They saw mostly darkness, with some colorful gas-nebulae-like things taking up some of the space that they were falling through. Their course was, strangely enough, not straight - instead, they seemed to be tossed around often and violently by the wisps of colorful stuff.

They tried to scream, not only in panic, but also in pain, for, like Eagle and Bass Clef eight days ago, they were turning from human to pony, and they definitely felt it. When they tried, though, they were cut short, unable to make any noise from their throat.

Their falling speed increased, along with the level of light when suddenly, they more or less flew out of the middle of some sort of building with an audible *SZHOoo-ooOSZH* the sound somehow playing and reversing.

They, however, hardly noticed this, because at that moment, they blacked out seeing some gray, white, and blue shape moving towards them.

The vision was paused as Spry said, “My apologies for having to show you this; it is how your friends got here, though the portal they entered was different. The original portal - the one I went through, was open for only a fraction of a second for some confusing reasons that I’ll get to later.”

The vision then continued, back in third person now.

Rob woke up surrounded by a deep blue aura. Needless to say, he was rather surprised, jumping back.

“Whoa!” he said, startled.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a voice audibly older than his own said. A gray unicorn - for that was the only thing that it could be - clad in royal blue and silver robes with a blue gem in the shape of a swirl, who Rob saw was creating the strange aura, walked in. This unicorn seemed to concentrate a bit, and the aura suddenly stopped, seeing as the spell to quicken awakening had done its job.

The pony spoke again, much to the surprise of Rob. “While you were unconscious, I took the liberty of gleaning your mind.” Rob looked a little offended. “It’s very strange,” he said, noting that somehow he was an anomaly, “There are many parts of it that are impossible to access, something that not even the Royal Sisters could do. As I can tell, you’re definitely no assassin sent to do your job, so tell me, who are you?”

Rob had heard all of this, but he was still stuck on the fact that one, he had just fallen through a portal to here and two, this was a unicorn pony and it was speaking. After thinking about it for a moment, something clicked. He put a hand to his face and said, “Oh, great. Now I’m in Carson’s little pony land... Why is my hand so hard?” For he suddenly realized that his hand was definitely not much of a hand. He looked and saw that he was a pony as well. Instead of screaming, or anything a normal person would think of, he simply put his hoof back to his face, sighing - fate had a rather cruel sense of humor didn’t it?

The gray unicorn repeated his question, now slightly annoyed.

“Oh!” Rob said, having forgotten about him. “My name is Rob.”

“Rob?”

“Rob.”

The older unicorn put a hoof to his long beard in thought. “‘Tis a strange name you have, ‘Rob,’” he informed. “Regardless,” he said, changing the subject, “I suppose some introductions are at hand on my part, are they not? I am Starswirl, dubbed ‘The Bearded.’”

An apt name, indeed. Rob thought. I remember something about all these ponies having strange, somewhat fitting names. Stuff like, ‘Twilight Sparkleypants,’ or something like that.

“Well, I suppose this could have been better met, Starswirl... Why do you seem so familiar, like I’ve seen you before?”

Starswirl shrugged. “It may be a number of things,” he said.

Rob suddenly had a very random thought. “Starswirl, what to I look like? I just got here from somewhere that is obviously very far away, and I seem to have changed my form from something somewhat similar to a primate, to this that you see.”

Starswirl’s expression became that of interest. “Indeed? This is certainly unusual news! Alright, let’s have a look.” He walked around Rob, doing a quick glance at his features. “Well, you appear to be an Earth pony...” Rob was confused that this. “Ah, let me explain: There are normally three types of pony races in this world of Equestria; The strong and reliable Earth pony, the light and fast-flying pegasus, who has wings, and the intelligent and magical unicorn like myself. Anyways, you have a green coat, hazel eyes, short brown mane... And your emblem appears to be a great, red mountain.”

Well at least I don’t look too silly, thought Rob and said, “Thank you.”

“Well,” Starswirl started, “You said that you changed forms and you don’t know how?”

“Yes.”

“I would like to know what your original appearance is, if that would not be too intrusive,” he inquired.

“Oh, well... Like I said, somewhat similar to primates, we walk upright, we wear clothes, we don’t have any fur, but we have hair on the tops of our heads. No tail.”

“Really?” Starswirl asked, intrigued.

“Yeah, really. Now, if it would be possible I would like to go home as soon as possible.

“Well, do you know where you came from?”

“Does ’Milky Way Galaxy’ ring a bell?”

“Not at all, I’m afraid. I should know, seeing as I am Head Royal Astronomer, among other things.”

Rob sighed. Obviously, it would not be that easy.

Starswirl’s brain was thinking, though. With the sound of a crazy idea that just might work in his voice, he told Rob, “From your account, it sounds like you are not from anywhere near. In fact... You’re not from anywhere at all.”

Rob was now questioning this pony’s sanity. Hah, I’m the one who’s a pony that’s seeing a talking unicorn and I’m questioning his sanity?

Starswirl then finished his train of thought. “You are not from anywhere because you’re from an entirely different dimension.”

Well, that made a lot more sense than anything else Rob could come up with.

Starswirl was now continuing on, his train of thought almost passing Rob by. “By all accounts, you shouldn’t even exist to me, and I to you,” he said with a hoof to his large beard. “Unfortunately, the boundaries between dimensions are completely impregnable. I fear you may even be going home. The again... that directly contradicts your account! Blast!” he said, punctuating the last word by stomping the hoof that was in his beard onto the ground.

Then it seemed as if he had an epiphany. His pacing that he had started and had gradually sped up suddenly halted. “Unless... Oh, bollocks, I knew I shouldn’t have tampered with the flow of time! Pardon the language.”

Rob was had read enough books, watched enough movies, and taught enough math to know instantly that the chances of him now becoming involved in this unfortunate turn of events was approximately eighty-seven point six-two-four-eight-nine percent.

Starswirl on the other hand knew that his calculations were wrong and that they were more like one-hundred percent.

“Don’t tell me,” Rob interrupted before the gray unicorn could say anything, “Now I have to help you fix time and space, and we have no idea what troubles we will fa-... see.”

Starswirl sat down, the bells on his intricate robery jingling. “It appears so. I would have hoped to hide this little experimental excursion from the world’s view, but it seems that fate said otherwise,” he sighed dejectedly.

“Well, we can always hope for the best. Like that this ‘little excursion’ as you called it, didn’t set off some cataclysmic event that spells out destruction for this world,” Rob said cheerfully - almost sarcastically so.

The adjacent unicorn was not impressed. “Yes. Let’s,” he replied, unconvinced. He then changed the subject. “Well, for this meeting not to be completely coincidental, now all we need is a pegasus- “

*SZHOoo-ooOSZH!*

“Great. Just great.”

The vision darkened at that point, quickly becoming the misty blackness that the three had experienced before.

Spry spoke again, still with the dream-like tone. “Well, I think that this has been enough for today. You have learned how I came into this world, and you learned that Starswirl used forbidden time magic which caused me and the pegasus to appear. You also learned that it is equally painful to enter through the portal as it is through the mind, and most importantly, you learned what the Elements of Balance and Oblivion.”

***

The vision suddenly stopped, and the three ponies regained awareness of their bodies, causing some initial confusion, though they eventually settled.

Cache awoke with a sore shoulders, while the other two had sore forelegs; a result of Eagle and Mitch having placed those forelegs on Cache’s arms.

To the surprise of the three young ponies in the room (Spry had expected this) it was now visibly dark through the closed windows, testifying that hours had passed since their before-noon excursion to Spry Canyons humble abode.

“It’s dark already?” Mitch asked.

Spry answered in response, “The way this works is rather strange, although it is the most effective way to do it. Basically, it’s sort of like a reverse dream in the sense that, although you perceive it as normal speed, it’s actually very slow, allowing your brain to fully grasp every important detail.”

This seemed convincing enough for the band of friends.

“Okay, it’s getting late, as you can see,” Spry said dismissively after a moment of indecisiveness. “I suggest that you head back to wherever you have found lodging.”

They seemed to be awoken from some internal brooding as once again were reminded of the fact that they needed sleep. As such, they said their farewells and set off back to the saloon.

“Or is it a tavern?” Eagletone asked. They were arguing about what the place would be called, considering it had not only hard salt but also food to dine on, not to mention places to sleep.

“Maybe it’s just called a bar,” Cache speculated.

“I’ll stay with ‘saloon,’” Mitch said, rather uncertainly.

“Speaking of which, we’re here,” Eagle cut in, for they were.

Cache drew his head back in slight befuddlement. “I must still be on ‘vision time,’ that walk passed fast!”

Mitch admitted that this certainly seemed the case for him as well and they laughed as they pushed the wooden door open, entering the... establishment.”

They were surprisingly weary, and looked worn but energetic as they walked into the serving area.

There were a larger number of ponies in there at this time of night. Most of them, it seemed, were inebriated to some degree or another.

They decided to eat something, seeing as they had not eaten since their late breakfast. Eagletone decided to try and broaden out his tastes to something slightly more normal, while the other two just shook their heads and ordered more usual foods. They talked for a while, brooding over and discussing everything about Spry’s vision to them and their eagerness for what the next day would bring.

They finished eating and climbed the fifteen steps at the side to the residential quarters. They passed Spitfire along the way in the little-furbished but nice-looking halls. When she and Eagle glanced at each other, it was no longer awkward. Instead, they beamed.

Eagle was still feeling happy about that as they arrived at their rooms, which coincidentally, were adjacent one with another. As such, he decided to part his friends for the night with a smidgen of humor.

“Y’know, I remember my parents praying with me every night when I was seven or eight. They told me this prayer in the dark!”

He then recited this prayer in the most hilariously creepy way possible.

“Now I lay me down to sleep... I pray the Looorrrd... My soul... to keeeeeep!

“If I.... Should DIE.... BEFORE I WAKE...

“I pray the Lord.

“My soul.

“To taaaaaaaake!

“G’night, sweetie! Sweet dreams!

“See you in the morning, maybe. Fifty-fifty chance!

“... Oh, and don’t let the bedbugs bite! AHAHAHAH!”

And with that maniacal laughter, he slammed his bedroom door and left his friends rolling on the floor, laughing.

End of Chapter Seven

Author’s note: Okay guys, if you’re really religious or just the complete opposite, just remember to love and tolerate. If all else fails, just don’t read this story; I don’t want any trolls or *ahem* “heated discussions” going on in my comments box. Also, here’s a link to where I got this.

The past (... and Present... and Future...) of Spry Canyon pt. 2

Chapter 8

The Past (...and Present...and Future...) of Spry Canyon pt.2

The morn following the Three’s first encounter with Spry’s past went without a hitch. Eagletone seemed not to be able to sleep late like he usually did, and woke up around the same time as last. He decided to go on a flight and contemplate all that had happened within the last number of days, like he often found himself doing, so by the time he returned, the other two of his friends had awoken, unlike the previous day. They ate breakfast together with few ponies besides; almost all were either still asleep or had already left, preferring to rise even before the sun did.

They walked across town to Spry’s small wooden lodge, beginning to build a routine, and knocked.

Spry had, of course, been expecting them to arrive, and nopony else would have knocked. Indeed, he seemed almost a stranger to the little town despite his living there for several years. As was so, he wasted no time in opening the door and welcoming his guests for another session with the past.

“Salutations on this fine morning,” he greeted warmly.

Eagletone nodded, getting right to business. “And a good morning to you. Now, we all know why we’re here, so let’s do this.”

“Hmm, no idle talk?” Spry questioned, finishing with, “No matter, let it begin.”

The Three got into the formation again, with Cache facing Spry and the two others with a hoof on one shoulder each.

***

Their vision was replaced by a familiar fog. “Let us start where we left off, shall we?” Spry’s disembodied voice said.

Unlike the other pony that just appeared in Starswirl the Bearded’s arcane laboratory, this young, silver pegasus stallion did not instantly blackout from the pain caused by the changing of one’s form without magical control. In fact, he only seemed a bit phased, even speaking.
“All right, what do we have- “ he began as he looked at his surroundings, interrupting himself quite rudely. “Holy mother of Celestia! Starswirl the Bearded!” he exclaimed with a backwards leap.

Indeed, and of course, Starswirl was certainly present. And at the present, he was repeatedly pounding his head with his gray hoof.

The new pony that suddenly appeared in Starswirl’s lab then calmed down and noticed that another pony was present. “What’s up with him?” he asked.

“You appeared at a rather coincidental time,” Rob replied, choosing his words carefully.

“How so?” the pegasus inquired in a tenor voice.

Starswirl came out of his small bout of self-abuse and replied to this question. “Rob here,” he began, gesturing at the respective Earth pony, “To put it simply, suddenly appeared out of an entirely different dimension! By our standards, this would be impossible, seeing as the boundaries between dimensions has never really been found, and has certainly never been penetrated. Something I did that I should not have may have caused this occurrence: I traveled through time.”

The brow of the new pegasus told of both confusion and unimpression. “Two things,” he responded, “One: Dimensional travel is totally possible! I’ve done it loads of times! That’s actually how I got here, even if it was an accident.”

Starswirl was dumbfounded.

“And two,” the silver pony continued, “Didn’t you make a time travel spell that was quite safe? Where you can only be there for a few moments, and you can only do it once?”

The blue-clad unicorn nodded understandingly. “I did, but I made another one. One with no limitations.”

The pegasus was clearly impressed. The green Earth pony seemed lost, but he knew his fair share of sciency things and terms to know that this was very impressive.

“Just think: Permanent time travel, as many times as you want, and with however many ponies as your magical strength can handle!” He exclaimed with a flourish.

Rob cut in at this moment. “There are, of course, major drawbacks as well, making this even more dangerous than perhaps anything else: Anypony could do it. They could wreak havoc, even destroy the entire universe.” Wait, anypony? he thought. Strange.

Starswirl continued on. “Of course, I had thought of that before I even attempted to unlock the first time spell. I may not be the wisest pony, but I certainly have the foresight to know what might happen if this kind of magical knowledge got out... I don’t believe I got your name...?”

“Silver Bullet,” the pegasus said proudly.

The unicorn put a hoof to his beard. “Seems a bit ironic, don’t you think, seeing as silver is pitted, causing it to have, terrible accuracy in projectiles.”

Silver Bullet’s brow now showed an expression of slight annoyance. “Yeah, my friend tells me that, too.”

Starswirl sat down and sighed. “Well,” he said in resignation, “You two were obviously here for a reason. I suppose I should skip any more formalities, now that the basics are taken care of, although you two certainly raise some rather interesting questions. It is time that I told you my best theory at the moment: When I used my ultimate time travelling spell, I decided to travel to the farthest reaches of time itself: The Dawn of the Elements of Harmony. Little did I know what would happen.

“When I appeared on the other side there was nothing but white; white as far as the eye could see, like a blank canvas. There was nothing that is, except for the elements that shone even brighter than the empty plane of light. There seemed to be an... inaudible music playing... It was peaceful. As I gazed upon the colored jewels of the Elements of Harmony off of the flat world around it, I noticed there was more than there should be; eight in fact.

“I looked at the extra three (for the last Element of Harmony is undiscovered), and a voice unlike any I had ever heard before spoke. It said to me, ‘Starswirl the Bearded, you notice that there are three extra Elements. They are here for a reason. That reason is you. Take them.’ Of course, who was I to defy a voice without a source, so I complied.

“I asked, ‘Why am I to take these back with me; what makes them different?’

“The voice answered, ‘Because the Elements you are holding, the Elements of Balance, were created for one purpose and one purpose only: To destroy a thing which never should have existed. As for what makes them different, the Elements of Balance can take a life.’

“I was a bit mortified at that prospect, but knew that if I were to take a life, I would do so in righteousness.

“I took my time taking everything in for a moment before I left; white, endless white, with nothing to supplement it save for myself and the glittering Elements.

“the voice told me one more thing before I departed: ‘The End of All, Oblivion, comes swiftly but the end of some comes moreso. There shall be Three to wield them, there shall be Six to stop It.’

“I thanked the voice then left, focusing my magic equally as hard as the last time, in order to get back to my own time. I was incredibly lucky, of course, to come back almost immediately after I had left. Come to think of it, I could have sworn I saw a moderately large group of ponies just as I vanished.

“I think that the Three this voice spoke of are us, the Three Bearers of the Elements, though I know not of who the Six are. I should think that we are also part of the Six, seeing as we wield the Elements to destroy Oblivion, the End of All.”

By the end of his speech, the bearded unicorn had his eyes closed, his face wrinkled by much more than age. The other two were wearing similar visages.

“I don’t like the prospect of taking a life,” Rob said, “But it is better that one thing be endings than all things perish.”

Silver Bullet sighed. “Alright, there’s no point in wasting time, so let’s do this,” he said with a tired determination. “Show us these Elements.”

Starswirl in blue took off a leathery saddlebag.

Strange, Rob thought, I didn’t think ponies would kill animals for leather.

The unicorn opened the bag and removed its jeweled contents. In it were three large jewels: A simple red ruby in a diamond-shape, a green emerald in a more-or-less shield-shape, and a more complicated sapphire that seemed to be composed of three jewels somehow held together to form a seven-pointed star. They were each glowing an aura the same color as themselves. Each pony instinctively knew what to do:

Rob reverently placed a hoof on the ruby. “Power, the Warrior,” he said, his voice obtaining a magical tone. The jewel began ringing at two C’s above middle.

Silver Bullet placed the tip of his wing on the emerald. “Courage, the Leader,” he declared, his voice becoming like that of Rob’s. The emerald rang at the next A.

Starswirl placed his horn on the sapphire. “Wisdom, the Speaker,” he spoke, his voice also becoming similar to Rob’s. The magical sapphire rang at the E after the emerald’s pitch.

***

Bass Clef’s response in the real world was abrupt; he pulled his foreleg off of Cache’s shoulder, knocking him free of Spry. This disconnected the vision, pulling the others from it as well.

“Wait a minute,” Bass said as soon as he had recovered enough to speak, “Seriously? ‘Power, Wisdom, and Courage?’ What are we, ripping off of Legend of Zelda or something?”

“Only a little bit,” Spry replied hastily, “The Elements, as you already know, are a bit different from the Triforce.”

Bass rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

They all reassumed the ‘visionary’ position and continued.

***

With the last note forming a triplet, the resonant frequencies audibly created the missing notes of the inverted A minor chord. The melodious cacophony sounded as if a six handed beast with perfect pitch were playing an assortment of finely tuned wineglasses.

The rather pleasant sound slowly raised in pitch and volume as the three ponies slowly came off the ground, their jewels glowing more and more brightly.

Then the three ponies spoke in unison, there voices impossibly combining into one: “Together, we are Balance, to rid this world of that which was never meant to be.”

The sound abruptly stopped as a magical whooshing sound was heard, the jewels suddenly becoming blinding, then they were all standing once again, no longer in the air and no longer glowing.

The three ponies once again spoke in unision, though not in the same voice.

Starswirl exclaimed, “Incredible!”

Silver Bullet said, “Whoa!”

Rob, slightly confused, simply asked, “What...?”

Despite this, Rob was the first to understand. As he looked down, shaking his head in confusion, he noticed he was wearing something besides the clothes he wore as a human: A simple, yet elegant breastplate that went around the neck and forelegs, with shoulderplates seamlessly connected. It appeared to be gold with argentine gilding, but was much too light and hard to be so, and most prominently, it had a large red ruby right at the middle of his chest. Two ends of a deep red cape with the lighter outline of a diamond were fastened, almost converging, about the neck-part of the piece of armor, yet the cape seemed magically enchanted as to not get in the way as capes often do. He thought it looked quite good: Simple, efficient, protective.

He spoke his surprise unintelligibly, the others gazing at the beautifully crafted protection. They then realized that they had some plate of their own.

Silver Bullet wore a similar (but slightly more fancy) breastplate with the emerald in a position that appeared upside-down; the shield shape was so, but with it like that, it looked much more like a speeding arrowhead, he realized. He also had a unique piece: wing protection. It was light addition, following only the bone structure and not the actual feathers, save for the tips. He also had a green bandana tied sweatband-style around his forehead and fastened by another upside-down shield shape at his forehead. “Sweet!” He exclaimed.

Starswirl’s array, though, was certainly the most impressive: Starting from the bottom up, he had a silver bracelet about his left forehoof, a deep blue cloak similar to the one he was previously worn but with silver cloth at the ends. Covering much of that was a golden chestplate, decoratively swirled at the sides with silver lining like the others. His had his seven-pointed sapphire star and bronze flourishes all around. On his head, he had a blue, extremely wizard-y hat, also lined with silver. All of the silver, it seemed, had intricate, magical-looking runes scrawled in lines. On closer examination, almost all the runes’ forms were rather vaporous and constantly changing and moving around, except for one rune at the front of his bracelet, which was larger than all the rest and appeared to be in the shape of a clockwise-swirl. His enormous beard, of course, covered up almost his entire front, though, so it was only through parting the facial hair and looking at the plate did he see.

Silver was the first to speak. “Aw, yeah!” he exclaimed enthusiastically.

Starswirl and Rob had to agree, but Swirl broke their rejoicing.

“Indeed, this is rather exciting, but you must recall the reason why we are wearing this armor and clothing: To destroy the Evil,” he said, his old voice possessing a sobering quality.

“Oh yeah, that,” Rob said sarcastically.

Starswirl walked over and seemed to perform a spell on the door. As he did this, the runes on his clothing lit up, and the door flew open, slamming loudly on the wall. Starswirl was a tiny bit surprised, but not completely frazzled. “Interesting,” he said, once again rubbing his beard, “These runes must be the most powerful I’ve ever used; I hardly applied any force at all!”

“Anyways,” he continued, “The day has worn for me and I am exhausted after everything that has happened today... and a hundred-thousand years ago.”

Rob nodded. “Indeed, although the day was halved for myself, I am rather taxed of my energy.”

“Yeah,” Silver Bullet agreed laconically.

Starswirl opened the door to leave the laboratory. “I have a guest bed, but the age difference may be... Awkward, to say the least,” he said.

“I’m used to sleeping on the ground,” Rob volunteered.

Starswirl nodded and said as he left (with the other two following), “Then let us get some rest. I imagine we’ve got a long day ahead.”

The image slowly blackened until it was completely dark. “This seems as good of a place to stop as any,” Spry Canyon commented in the dream-like voice of the vision.

***

The formation was broken for a second time that day, this time by Spry. The Three awoke again with headaches and sore arms, but were prepared this time.

“Now, what have we learned?” Spry asked in the voice he used for teaching students.

Bass Clef raised his hoof. “The Elements of Balance bond with the Three Bearers from their gem-form, and it looks so awesome!”

Spry nodded.

Cache imitated Bass. “There are Three who Bear the Elements, but Six who help them.”

Finally, Eagletone came in, tying everything together. “I think Starswirl’s theory was partly wrong,” he said after a while. “He and his two friends were not the Three of legend, but only placeholders until the real Three came... Us three and those three must be the Six to stop It!”

If Spry had fingers, he would have snapped them. “Exactly!” he exclaimed. “But, my little students,” he went on jokingly, “We’ll get to that later. Class is now dismissed.”

The Three said their farewells and were off, but this time it wasn’t quite so late. The sun had not yet set, and it was (,so far as Eagletone could tell,) summer. As such, he judged the time to be approximately the second hour of the watch - About Eight O'Clock.

Eagletone was both looking forward to and fearing what he was going to ask Spitfire after they got back to their place of slumber. Shipping, he thought. It’s a lot better in real life than it is in books.

It was still uncomfortably hot, the cold of the desert night not having quite taken grasp of the small town, and so they traversed the path across town as quickly as a walk could take them. They opened the door to the saloon- bar- tavern- ...The establishment currently housing them, and Eagletone was fortunate enough to immediately find the mare he was looking for.

The fiery pegasus greeted them, and they greeted back. Eagle broke off from his two friends and cleared his throat. “Hey, ah, Spitfire... Could you, ah, com’ere for a moment?” he asked with the grace of a hippopotamus, motioning towards the stairs.

The Wonderbolt nodded, smiled, and got up to follow her new close friend.

They walked up to the slightly more secluded halls of the housing quarters of the place, and Eagle asked his question.

He cleared his throat. “So... I was wondering if you could, ah, go with me to a- on a...”

“- A date?” Spitfire finished gently.

“Yeah. That thing... Sometime... Somewhere.”

“Sure.” she replied with a bright smile. “Where to?”

The red pegasus with a large feather tied to his ear stared, stuck between three thoughts: “She just said yes,” “where do we go,” and, ”Oh crap I did not plan this out very well, did I?”

“Ah...” he said unintelligibly. Of course, that’s not to say unintelligently, although he certainly felt that way at the moment. He finally thought of something to say. Though the words were not quite brilliant, the location was, and was incredibly simple as well. His face lit up at the thought of it. “I’ve got a place I know of. When do you have some free time?” he replied somewhat surreptitiously.

The orange pegasus gazed with a look of slight befuddlement mixed with an ounce of eagerness to see what crazily brilliant idea Eagletone had thought of this time as she slowly turned to trot away.

“Lokisday,” she replied with a grin.

Eagletone stared back with a rather pleased smile on his face. Saturday is now what it was originally supposed to be called, he thought.

End of Chapter 8

So You Say Time Travel is Impossible, Eh?

Chapter 9

So you say time travel is impossible, eh?

Eagletone was lamenting his condition. When he had woke up, he had decided to look at his reflection. (something he had neglected to do for the number of days that he had been in Equestria) When he saw what he saw, he was somewhat dismayed - he had a scraggly chin’s worth of a beard that was too thin to look good at all.

Now, perhaps some explaining is due: On Earth, puberty had more or less hit Eagletone (then Carson) like a freight train and passed like a fighter jet, leaving a basso profundo who, among other things, could grow a full beard in a matter of a fortnight. In Equestria, very few ponies lived long enough or had the ability to grow what could be considered “facial hair,” so there was hardly any way to shave, since there was no real need for ponies to do so. With Eagletone’s high levels of beard-growing hormones and Equestria’s beard-stopping sorcery, he had been left with something that grew, yet looked awful.

“Aww, no!” he whined, being a pony who was at least somewhat concerned about his appearance. He decided that he needed some way to shave, otherwise he would most surely be the laughing stock of all of Equestria. Seeing as there was no easy way to do so (especially so with hooves for hands), he ran to the most magical pony he knew the location of.

Cache awoke to the rather annoying sound of his name being repeated endlessly. What Eagletone was saying was just that: “Cache, Cache, Cache, Cache...” What Cache heard, though was, “Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep...”

The repetitive noise being easily mistaken for an alarm in his sleeping state, his muscle memory took over and he hit the source of the noise to turn it off. What he didn’t expect was the loud “Ouch!” that came when he hit it. This irregularity woke him up at least partially.

“Dude, you hit my face!” Eagletone complained, cushioning his hurt muzzle.

“Oh, sorry,” Cache replied in a groggy, half-asleep way.

Eagle disregarded his injury and pulled Cache out of bed continuing, “Anyways, I need you to shave.”

“What?”

“Shave me. More accurately, my face.”

“Oh, okay,” said Cache, now understanding. He shook himself a bit more into wakefulness and concentrated on sharpening his telekinesis into a blade, then carefully re-carved Eagle’s previously decimated face.

After several minutes, Eagletone was clean-shaven and surprised at the precision that Cache was able to use. “Thanks man, I never knew you were that good at magic,” he said with an undertone of slight amazement.

“Me neither,” Cache responded, apparently surprised at his own skill. “Well, I’m awake now; might as well eat,” he concluded, the concentration having woke him.

“Agreed,” Eagletone grinned and trotted out with him, adding, “Let’s get Bass Clef as well,” as he did so.

Sitting in the saloon part of the Salt Block, the Three were speculating about what would happen next. Most of all, Eagletone was very concerned as to why and how ponies would have leather. He decided to ask Spry when they got to his house.

As they were trotting along the Western-style streets that morning, their conversation came to the subject of Jed and Aaronius.

“Seriously guys, has either of you seen them lately?” Eagle was asking.

Bass chatted back, “I keep hearing they get up really early, so I guess we just keep missing them.”

“Yeah, but don’t you think they would come back at some point?” Cache replied, catching Eagle’s train of thought.

That got Bass Clef thinking. “Good point,” he said.

At that moment they arrived at Spry’s home, so their conversation was cut short. Cache knocked and Spry opened the door and welcomed them into the somewhat sparsely furnished house. They set immediately and solemnly to the recounting of the past, getting into their now-familiar position.

***

Spry introduced the Three to today’s lesson. I hope to get through much today; I will go a bit faster this time, so unfortunately you won’t have as much time to take everything in.

Rob awoke to a rumbling and a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. the torches inside the room (and indeed, the whole building, it seemed) had been blown out, and so it was difficult to see.

Starswirl’s voice was coming from somewhere in the ceiling of the room. It was saying, “If you are hearing this there is an emergency and the house must be evacuated.” At this point, Rob was now somewhat panicked. Silver had woken up before Rob and was listening to the message as well. It went on, “There is a central magic elevator shaft in the middle of the home, which may or may not be functional; I would suggest trying that first. You are currently one hallway east of the shaft...” The message continued, but the two had immediately bolted in the direction of the center of the house.

The rumbling continued, perhaps even getting louder, but they reached the shaft. Rob was rather confused, because instead of having arrowed buttons on the wall, there was only a pad. Silver, though, was familiar with this kind of technology, so he quickly smacked the pad, causing the doors to instantaneously slide open. They ran inside to find a long line of buttons. One was lit up, most likely indicating which floor they were currently on. Rob pressed the button that said, “1,” on it and was surprised to feel an absolutely gut-wrenching sensation.

He felt as if his center of mass were being jerked in aimless spirals strongly enough to blur his sight, because all he saw was thin blue lines erratically darting and extending every which direction. Fortunately, this only lasted for the briefest moment, and they were back in the elevator again, which opened to reveal a different layout than when they had entered.

Silver, now winded, galloped out the door with Rob woozily stumbling behind - his gut still hurt, and it wasn’t just what had just happened (although that hadn’t exactly helped, either); the sick feeling he had been having was becoming more intense.

“Never... again... will I teleport...” he gasped, holding his stomach as best as he could without hands.

Silver yelled, “Come on!” and picked him up onto his own shoulders, continuing to run as fast as he could. As he was galloping, Starswirl’s voice continued to repeat his emergency message, directing them to outside the house. The further they went, the darker it became, until they could almost see nothing at all. Rob’s stomach also became more painful as they progressed, nearly incapacitating him, and leaving him somewhat delirious. Each time they made a turn, he would groan, becoming louder as they went on.

Finally, they burst out of the front door to see nothing but shades of black. All they could hear was screaming, and all they could taste was... darkness.

Among the panicking voices, they could hear Starswirl’s, and he was coming nearer. As they turned to see him, they also saw something that paralyzed them and made them fear for their lives: It was a formless shape of pure black. Like ink dropped in water, it seemed to be seeping into the fabric of everything else. It had two red eyes that were pits to the deepest recesses of a torture chamber and a maw that was a hole to inexistence. Cold terror trickled down Rob’s spine as he waited to die, but as it came closer, he saw another thing that jump-started the adrenaline in his body.

Starswirl had a golden ball of light surrounding him, and his horn seemed to be a bonfire of brightness. He formed and sent a majestic lance of white into the middle of the cloud of evil, causing it to burst and have to reform. He took that time, to dash over to Rob and Silver as they ran to him as well.

“Starswirl!” Silver Bullet shouted as they neared him, “What the crap is that thing?!”

Starswirl’s eyes were glowing and trails of gold were slowly steaming from them as he replied, “I have no idea, but it must be stopped!”

They all turned as they heard the rushing of all this thing’s parts coming back together. It gave them one hateful glance, backed up, and began to compress itself.

Silver stared at it for a moment, bewildered. “What’s that thing do-”

SZHWHOOSH-BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!

The monstrosity suddenly imploded and then shot towards the ground, seeming to disappear explosively as it did so. Everypony was relieved as the area brightened back up except for Starswirl, who, if possible, became even more worried.

He turned to them, grave. “That thing just time-jumped. Into the past.”

Rob’s eyes widened in distress, while Silver was still confused.

“Do you know what this means?” Starswirl continued.

Rob took a moment to reply. “...We have to stop it, or it will destroy everything.”

Silver blinked and sat down. “That thing is Oblivion,” he suddenly realized.

***

The scene blacked out until nothing could be seen. How do you like them apples?

Them apples is pretty scary, Mitch replied with both seriousness and jest.

Eagle flipped out somewhat. Wait, we can talk here? It’s not just Spry?!

He could feel an exasperated feeling emanating from Cache. I had assumed you knew this, he replied.

Well, it wasn’t exactly ever explained, Eagle responded with some frustration. He then became somber. But that... thing... was terrifying.

Thick in the hypothetical air was permeating the feeling of a primordial fear that chilled the blood and froze the marrow.

There was a pause in the conversation as dark tension built.

Spry broke the tension, exclaiming, Well, it’s time for more!

***

The grim tension that had been building with their conversation seemed to carry over to the past.

Starswirl had teleported all three back into this house and locked the doors; they were back in the laboratory. “I had hoped to become somewhat more acquainted with these Elements of Balance before we tried using them, but alas, now we haven’t the chance to do so. I can follow that thing to where- when he went, but it will certainly be a difficult task to do so.”

Rob stood. “Do what you must,” he said stoically but also woozily, once again rather sick from teleporting.

Starswirl took a deep breath and exhaled deeply with a resolute slowness. As he calmed himself, his horn quickly began glowing. Increasing in brightness, his light-golden aura began enveloping his entire body, and then Rob and Silver felt strangely light and tingly as it enveloped them as well. They could no longer see past the aura, as it had thickened, but that did not last for long. Starswirl once again inhaled and exhaled, leaning forward as he did so.

It seemed also that he would fall and embarrass himself, but when he would have hit the ground, the aura quickly disappeared with a whoosh, along with everything around them, or so it appeared to be. Rob’s gut dropped along with his body, resulting in a rather frightening feeling, like being on a rollercoaster without the safety bar... or even the car train. Nevertheless, the feeling was somewhat familiar; he suspected that it was from having already fallen through a portal to Equestria rather recently.

Everything was black, but they seemed to be following a very faint tubular path as they fell. Rob tried to scream, but no sound came out.

A light could be seen up ahead, and as they neared it, they could see that several different coloured lights were erratically swirling around a large white central light source. It seemed to grow brighter as they struck, and when they did, even the few ambient sounds they could hear were muffled. Indeed, it felt much like diving into a swimming pool, for their descent was slowed to a stop, and the light was noticeably denser than the empty space.

He felt as if the lights were all compressing, along with himself, until they seemed to go through him. As they did so, he found himself in a green field, seemingly unperturbed by any outside force, and definitely not Oblivion. He stared in awe at Starswirl, who was slightly winded at his feat of magic.

After staring wide-eyed at nothing in particular for a moment, Starswirl blinked, took a deep breath, and quickly exhaled. Immediately, he started walking. “Right then, Let’s go in the direction of that castle.” he said, strangely nonchalant and pointing towards a rather large castle that Rob had somehow completely missed in his initial scan of the area.

Seeing as the castle was a good distance off, it took them a while to get there. About midway along their journey, they suddenly found themselves surrounded, although perhaps it was only Rob who had not noticed the pegasus troops coming.

“Halt!” The pony who appeared to be captain commanded. “Drop your weapons and armor and state your name and purpose of being here!”

Silver blinked, realizing something. “We can’t.”

The guard decided to get in his face about it. “Can’t what?” he said menacingly.

“We can’t take our armor off; it’s stuck!”

The captain was quickly getting frustrated. “Whadda’ ya’ mean it’s stuck? All you have to do is take it off!” With much grunting and straining, he began to attempt to grasp the chestplate from off of Silver, but to no avail. “That’s some interesting armor you’ve got there. Where’d you get it?”

“It’s... confusing, to say the least.”

At this moment, Starswirl came into the conversation. “Excuse me, but I think you are forgetting the other half of your orders. I am Starswirl, called The Bearded and these two are with me. We have come to talk to whoever is the lord of this castle.” He removed his large wizard hat, revealing his horn.

The captain was very surprised. He and his troops immediately bowed down. “Forgive me, good sir; I had no idea...”

“Arise,” Starswirl interrupted, for he had no time for any of this nonsense. “I would appreciate it if you took us to your leader.”

Silver Bullet almost snorted.

“Of course, sir,” the pegasus said quickly, willing to comply to the unicorn’s will. He turned to his men - ah, stallions - and began to shout orders. “Sharp Edge, Ironhoof! You two carry the unicorn while we fly!”

The respective ponies responded smartly with a “Yes, sir!” and went to what they were assigned.

“Lightwing, Fortè! Carry the earth pony!”

The other two pegasi responded in likeness to the previous two.

The captain then looked at Silver. “I trust you can fly, pegasus?”

Silver grinned. “Faster than you, I would imagine.”

The captain’s face mirrored Silver’s with competition in his eyes. “You’re on,” he said, to Silver, then raising his voice for all his troops to hear he commanded, “Troops! Prepare to fly; we’ve got a contestant for the fastest wing!”

All of the military pegasi braced themselves, and gracefully took off, carrying Starswirl and Rob with them. Silver, however, waited.

“You coming, or are you chicken?” the captain called out once he noticed that Silver had not come with them.

“I’m giving you a fair head-start,” Silver Bullet called back.

The captain shrugged, his wings beating faster. “Your funeral,” he yelled before he turned his head to continue on.

After the group of pegasi were little more than specks in the sky, Silver began trotting. His trot turned into a canter, and his canter turned into a gallop. Holding his wings out, he began to catch the air. Finally, when he was at a dead run, he jumped with all his might and gave one hard flap, sending him much farther than even he would have expected. He laughed; this was going to be a lot easier than he expected.

After a number of more hard and fast flapping, he began to see something strange about himself - the beginnings of a sonic cone. Finally, he pushed with all his might and something incredible happened.

The captain was already celebrating his victory when he was about three quarters of the way to the castle. He was just beginning to laugh when he heard thunder. That’s strange, it’s not raining. He looked in the direction of the sound (along with all of the other troops) and was completely dumbstruck to witness an enormous shockwave knock around several trees and extend into the clouds. At the center of this shockwave was a dot that was coming nearer. No, it was not a dot, it was Silver! He had created a sonic boom!

Silver Bullet quickly grew from a dot in the distance back to a dot in the direction they were headed. Before that, though, while he was passing the group, he yelled as loud as he could, “IIIIII WIIIIIIIINNN!”

The captain could only stare slack-jawed at the spectacle as Silver returned to the group. The troops were even more impressed; one of them had completely stopped flying until he almost hit the ground, but remembered to think just before he became a pile of mush.

“Two words,” Silver said with closed eyes and crossed forelegs, “Ha, ha.”

The commotion caused by the sonic boom alerted even more troops than had already come. Soon, there was about fifty military pegasi surrounding everypony.

An electric-blue-coated mare who was wearing the same color of armor as the captain flew angrily up to him. “What’s going on, Falcon?!” she demanded in a gruff voice.

“That’s Falcon’s Eye to you, and this little pony,” he retorted, motioning towards Silver Bullet, “just flew faster than the speed of sound, Blue Lighting!”

Immediately, the mare was stopped in her tracks. She slowly looked at Silver, her eyes widening as she did so. Silver nodded his affirmation and Blue Lighting’s jaw dropped.

Somewhat recovering from her awe, she attempted to brush it off. “And what of the big flash you saw in the distance?”

Falcon’s Eye pointed his hoof towards Starswirl. “Unicorn. We’re not really sure what he was doing, but apparently the earth pony and the pegasus are with him.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, if we’ve got a snotty upclass unicorn noble, we’d better get going, shouldn’t we?”

Starswirl spoke up. “Agreed, but I hardly would consider myself ‘snotty.’ In fact, I am quite certain I could defeat you in battle.”

As the group started moving towards the castle again, Blue Lightning huffed. “Well, of course you wou-”

“Without my magic,” Starswirl interrupted.

Some of the soldiers began jeering and cheering, until her head shot backwards venomously, silencing the crowd instantaneously. She turned back towards her conversation. “I’d like to see you try. O-Eight hundred hours, sharp, Lokisday.”

“I’ll be there, but ah, that reminds me: what day is it?”

“Thursday,” she responded. “Why do you ask?”

He decided to try and avoid the real answer as much as possible. “Let’s just say we’ve been... traveling for quite a while,” he said surreptitiously.

“Without supplies?”

“Unicorn.”

Blue Lightning shrugged, ending the conversation. They had arrived at the castle, anyways, so they landed. A guard was sent to escort them to the location of the lord of the place.

Walking along a large carpet through the wide stone halls adorned with paintings, vases, windows, and other fancy things, the guard was trying giving a tour of the place. “...And this is the bust of... oh, what was her name again? Ah, I forget, but she was important. Heh, I’m not exactly the type to be teachin’ about history, me being more interested in flying and fighting and the like.”

They graduated a long spiral staircase covered in stained-glass windows facing the outside of the keep and paintings facing the inside. In between paintings, there seemed to be a bust of a different pony, but they all looked related, as if they were descendents of each other. It turned out that they actually were. “This staircase, which leads up to Lord Nightwing’s hall, shows his lineage pretty far back. That bust at the beginning of the staircase is his grandpa with a lot of greats.” They neared the top, and the line of busts stopped, leaving room for several more generations of children to rule.

Finally, they came upon a wooden door with a large knocker. The guard grabbed the ring and proceeded to knock loudly, which confused Rob because he had no hands to grab it with. Oh, well, he thought. “Lord Nightwing,” the guardpony called out, “We have visitors; an earth pony, a pegasus who broke the sound barrier, and a unicorn who already challenged Captain Blue Lightning to no-magic, single combat and has a funny-looking hat!”

Starswirl huffed.

“Come in,” said a somewhat-old sounding voice, which was muffled by the large door.

The guard opened the door and bowed.

The three assorted ponies entered into Nightwing’s chambers and found it to be quite spacious. A large circular first floor served as an entryway, with an assortment of delicate-looking instruments lining the half-wall. A few steps of stairs on either side of the large room revealed an even larger first-and-a-half floor. Every wall except for one was lined with tall shelves of books, and strewn throughout were several tables covered in open tomes and strange trinkets. A desk much larger than the other tables sat in front of a very large window that opened to a wondrous view.

A tall ladder (which they climbed, not finding Lord Nightwing on the first floor) led to an even higher room. Instead of being covered with books and flooded with light, there were stone walls for at least forty feet, leading into a glass hemisphere with a cover and a stand for a rather large telescope. This room was quite dark, and contained a large bed with curtains. Couches were along the walls of the place, offering somewhere to sit were there somepony there who needed to sit.

The mysterious Lord Nightwing decided to finally show himself. Flying down from the telescope’s balcony, it was revealed to them that he was much like Princess Luna in the sense that he was dark in color... and he was an alicorn.

Before he could say anything, Starswirl had realized this and had immediately bowed down. Looking rather surprised, he spoke in a somewhat humorous tone. “Arise, unicorn. I assure you that you have no reason to bow to me if you got within three miles of here without the detection of my mages and have challenged my strongest fighter to a battle.”

Starswirl arose and dusted off his long beard.

“Your beard is that long? You must be older than I!”

He looked away, embarrassed. “I devised a couple of spells here and there...”

Walking towards the group of three he shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat, ‘captain,’” he said in a joking manner.

Nightwing turned his gaze to Silver Bullet. “And I hear you broke the sound barrier?”

Silver felt like this was somepony he could trust enough to talk casually to. He laughed. “You’d have to be deaf if you didn’t!”

Nightwing grinned. “Impressive; very impressive!” he said. Finally, he turned his gaze to Rob. “And what incredible feat of strength can you pull off?”

“I’m no great pony,” he said humbly, “Just the right one, I hope.”

Lord Nightwing nodded in approval. “Humility is a virtue that is hard to come by. I simply can’t stand ponies who are prideful. Now, I assume you have heard my name by now. If not, I am Nightwing, lord of this castle. And you are... ?”

“Starswirl, called ‘The Bearded,’” he bowed, but quickly arose after realizing what he was doing.

“Silver Bullet. I don’t kill werewolves.”

“Robert Allen, or Rob for short.”

The last name made Nightwing pause. “Rob? That’s a weird name,” he mumbled to himself.

“Okay, okay, I get it: my name doesn’t exactly work here. You know what? from here on call me Spry Canyon.”

The dark alicorn king smiled. “A fine name, if you ask me.”

The others nodded.

Nightwing decided to cut the small talk and get serious. “Now that we’re done with introductions, we have the interesting part: Why are you here?”

In unspoken agreement with Silver, Starswirl also felt that this was a pony whom they could trust. He decided to lay out the whole story on him, in an abridged sort of way. “So, it all started when I created a spell that could travel through time. Unfortunately, this spell could only take you there for a few seconds, and could only be used once in a lifetime. Although I was aware of the dangers that accompanied, this was not enough for me. I decided to find something... more powerful. Perhaps I created something that was too powerful. I devised a way that, through extremely complex means, a wielder of magic could permanently bring as many ponies as their magical power could allow through the fabric of time as many times as they wanted! Against my princesses’, and even my own advisement, I was too tempted not to try something so amazing. I wanted to test the spell’s limits, and found that there are very few; I ended up before the creation of the universe and was ordered to take back three very special jewels. I went back to my current time and soon after found that I seemed to break at least one hole in the barrier between dimensions and brought Spry Canyon from his world into ours. Soon after that, Silver Bullet appeared as well. The following morning, something I was warned about when I went before time appeared. This something was so horrible that, had we not impeded it, it would have spelled out the end of everything in existence. Unfortunately, the thing went back in time, seemingly with its own time spell. I tried to follow it, but I suppose that my trajectory was slightly off. I seems that I went a bit too far, ending up here.”

Nightwing had sat listening carefully to Starswirl’s story. Letting silence take over for a moment while he think, he eventually broke it saying, “Those three gems you’re wearing: would they happen to be called... The Elements of Balance?”

“Indeed they are,” Starswirl replied.

Nightwing sighed. “Then this entire world is in graver trouble than I had ever imagined.” He stood up quickly, his horn igniting. “Come with me!” he said as he teleported the group out of his bedchamber.

***

Spry Canyon had broken the Visionary Bond. Strangely, the time of day seemed not to have changed, judging by the light coming in around the wooden shutter doors on the windows.

“By the way,” Spry commented, “It’s been approximately twenty-eight hours.”

Oh, that’s why.

Before the Three knew it, they were in bed, having gotten something to eat at Spry’s already. They had felt very awake in the ‘dream,’ but were dead tired in real life. As such, they did not have a chance to converse with each other about what the last memory had meant, and indeed had not conversed with anypony before falling flat on their beds.

“Goodnight, pillow,” Eagletone said into his pillow, his voice muffled. He quickly began to snore.

Author's Note

Yay! We have another chapter, and this one's a whopping FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED words long! Some new characters, some story development, and the first appearance of Oblivion! Prepare for a long Chapter 10!